New Delhi: Air India has announced to scale up its Delhi-Dubai and Mumbai-Dubai operations from June 1, a route that for the last few years was dominated by Jet Airways. Air India already has one flight each daily between Delhi-Dubai and Mumbai-Dubai and it will be adding two more flights daily taking it to a total of four flights now.
Between 2005-2012, Air India had six flights daily on this prime route which was given to Jet Airways. However, with Jet Airways now out of operations, Air India has decided to restore its previous routes. It is learnt that the next in line may be Pune-Dubai route.
“We have decided to increase our flights on Delhi-Dubai and Mumbai-Dubai route. From June 1 we are adding two more flights on these routes. These flights will also return with passengers, hence, total to and fro flights will be eight. The fresh flights have been introduced keeping in mind the Id rush and will continue thereafter,” sources in Air India said.
The additional flights will also help in bringing down airfares that have shot up ever since Jet Airways suspended its international flights.
With Jet Airways out of picture, several airlines like Air India, IndiGo, Vistara and SpiceJet are now eyeing the prime foreign routes that Jet Airways till recently handled.
The civil aviation ministry on Friday held a meeting with senior executives of the Indian airlines on the issue of temporary allocation of foreign flying rights of Jet Airways to others.
Following the meeting, civil aviation secretary P.S. Kharola said that his ministry will create a transparent standard operating procedure to allocate these rights on a temporary basis.
The civil aviation secretary, however, added that even though several airlines have sought international flying rights, it is national carrier Air India that will be given priority.
“We had asked airlines to confirm their requirement of (domestic) slots and (international) traffic rights...Their requests have been officially logged in. Our people will do an analysis now and we will evolve a transparent SOP based on which the rights will be given,” Kharola said.
He, however, added that even though several airlines have sought international flying rights it is national carrier Air India that gets priority and it has already been allotted a few routes. Officials claimed that ever since Jet Airways suspended its operations, government has allocated 480 out of 750 domestic routes to other airlines.
