Though India-Italy relations are not at the best level in recent times. Still cultural and and commercial ties are strong between the Europe's fourth largest economy and the world's fastest growing major economy India. In fact Italy is home to the second largest Indian diaspora in Europe, after the UK with around 150,000 people of Indian-origin based there. At present, Air India and China Airlines (Taiwan) are the only two airlines to operate non-stop flights between the two countries. The later enjoys fifth-freedom traffic rights between India and Italy. Air India offers direct flights to both Rome and Milan from its Delhi hub while China Airlines operates Taipei-Delhi-Rome service. Air India which has returned to Italy market in 2014 almost after a decade, initially used to operate Delhi-Rome-Milan-Delhi triangular service on four days and on the other direction on three days. Later, it had split the triangular service to three weekly Delhi-Rome terminating service and four weekly Delhi-Milan-Delhi in the winter 2015-16 schedule. The India-Italy non-stop capacity to go down from December 2016 with China Airlines withdrawing from the Delhi-Rome sector, therefore opening up opportunities for more non-stop service in the already under-served India-Italy market. Another long-haul carrier from Taiwan, EVA Air is coming to Delhi in late 2016 or early 2017, it also has plans to fly Barcelona and Milan in Europe. It would be interesting to see whether the Taiwanese carrier flies to these European destinations from Delhi exercising the fifth freedom rights.
