Saudia changes India operations in W16

In the upcoming winter 2016-17 schedule effective from 30 October 2016, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Saudia  making major changes in its Indian operations. This includes dropping Dammam-Bengaluru sector while other routes see capacity augmentation. The airline increasing Jeddah flight frequencies from Delhi and Mumbai and Riyadh flight frequencies from Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. While Hyderabad flights see operating aircraft being upgauged from Airbus A330-300 to Boeing 777-200ER to both Jeddah and Riyadh. 

Underserved Route: Kolkata-Pune

Kolkata and Pune, the two major cities of the East and West India, are served by the fifth busiest and ninth busiest airports in India respectively. But the direct air connectivity between Kolkata and Pune is not yet fully developed as only one daily non-stop flight and three one-stop direct flights are operational on the route as of date. In fact Kolkata is the only metro city which receives just one daily non-stop flight from Pune. Still a rapid increase has been experienced in the demand of air travel between the two cities in recent times. In May 2016, a total of 19,323 O&D passengers (two-way) have traveled between Kolkata and Pune, reporting a 26% growth from almost a year ago.

RwandAir to launch Mumbai flight in December 2016

Rwandan national carrier RwandAir has finalised plans to launch direct flight to Mumbai from its hub in Kigali in December 2016. The proposed service includes a stop-over in Dar es Salaam in both direction as the airline plans to leverage its fifth freedom traffic rights to carry passengers solely between India and Tanzania. RwandAir, the fastest growing airline in Africa, is gearing up to launch long/mid-haul flights with wide-body aircraft. And Mumbai is going to be one of its first few mid-haul/wide-body destinations along with Dubai and possibly Guangzhou. It currently operates an all narrow-body fleet and has one Airbus A330-200 and one A330-300 on order which are likely to join fleet in the next couple of months.

Vistara anchors at Port Blair

Vistara adds Port Blair as its 18th destination to its network. The airline to operate daily flight to Port Blair from its Delhi hub via Kolkata from 30 September 2016. It also adds a third daily flight on the Delhi-Kolkata sector from the same day. Vistara is expanding domestic operations with the arrival of its 12th aircraft (likely registration VT-TTM) in late September and Port Blair is in many way the obvious choice for the airline as it was indicated in the blog before. The service launch is perfectly timed given the peak tourists season in Port Blair stars from October onward. The island city is among the top 10 busiest domestic destinations out of Kolkata so the airline opens the second route from Kolkata to Port Blair after Delhi. It becomes only the third destination in Vistara's network where the airline does not fly non-stop from its Delhi hub, Bagdogra and Jammu being the other two. Though primarily focused on business travellers, Vistara has a growing list of leisure destinations including Goa, Jammu, Kochi, Port Blair and Srinagar.