Responding to heightened traffic demand from the Gulf, public sector carrier Indian has decided to step up connectivity by introducing direct daily flights to Dubai from Mumbai and increasing frequencies to Chennai and Kozhikode among others, raising its total weekly services to 96 in the region.
As part of its summer schedule, Mumbai would be connected to Dubai with a daily Airbus A-320 flight from March 26, while daily services would be launched to this United Arab Emirates city from Chennai and Kozhikode, an Indian spokesperson said.
Two other new flights from Chennai would be once a week to Sharjah via Thiruvananthapuram, with the flight being extended from Sharjah to Kuwait once a week. With these new services, its operations to the Gulf would go up to 96 per week with 15 cities being connected from India.
The government has not allowed private carriers to operate on the profitable Gulf route and has kept it reserved for the public sector carriers, Indian and Air India, for three years.
Nagpur would get its first connection from April 15 to Bangkok on the Hyderabad-Nagpur-Bangkok sector twice a week.
With this, Indian would connect the Thai capital with nine destinations in the country, offering 29 flights per week, including a daily frequency from Kolkata.
Indian would now offer 67 flights each week to Southeast Asia.
On the domestic front, while Chennai and Mumbai would be connected with a fifth daily flight, the capacity on the Kolkata-Bagdogra sector would be doubled to four flights a week from the existing two.
Indian, Air-India summer schedule
National carrier Indian and Air India would introduce their summer schedules from March 26, 2006.
- A release from Indian said that the IC-731/732 flight between Kolkata and Bangkok would operate daily.
- On Tuesdays and Fridays the flight would leave Kolkata at 0930 hrs and on other days of the week the flight would leave Kolkata at 0920 hrs.
- The frequency of the Kolkata-Bagdogra-Kolkata flight has been increased from two days to four days. The flight IC-721/722 would leave Kolkata at 1430 hrs on Mondays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
- The Airbus 319 aircraft would operate on the Kolkata-Ahmedabad-Jaipur-Kolkata sector leaving Kolkata at 1450 hrs on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays.
- The flight IC-267 would operate on the Kolkata-Jaipur-Ahmedabad-Kolkata sector leaving Kolkata at 1530 hrs on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
- The flight CD-7256 to Dimapur would leave Kolkata at 1130 hrs on Tuesdays, the release said.
- Another release from the Air India said that its summer schedule to and from Kolkata would also be effective from March 26, 2006.
- The Kolkata-London flight AI-151 would leave Kolkata for London at 1330 hrs on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and at 1340 hrs on Thursdays as per the summer schedule.
- The AI-531 Dhaka-Kolkata flight would leave Dhaka at 1140 hrs reaching Kolkata at 1200 hrs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. The AI-530 Kolkata-Dhaka flight would leave Kolkata at 1410 hrs reaching Dhaka at 1530 hrs on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, the release added.
