Air India to deploy more wide-bodied planes on global routes

By IANS,

New Delhi: Air India will deploy the wide-bodied Boeing aircraft B777 on all its seven west-bound destinations as well as Tokyo from Oct 25, the national carrier said Saturday.


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“With more than half of our fleet now comprising of the new aircraft, it has given us an opportunity to rework our winter schedule in such a manner as to provide passengers with a product that matches the best in the industry, both on international and domestic sectors,” the airline said in a statement.

Currently the state-of-the-art B777s are flown to New York, Chicago, Frankfurt and London.

“The B777 will now be extended to Newark, Paris, Toronto and Tokyo, on long-haul destinations,” it said.

Of the 111 new aircraft on order, the airline has received and inducted 64 aircraft so far. They include nine B777-300ER, eight B777-200LR, 15 A321 and A319 aircraft, besides 17 B737-800 aircraft for Air India Express.

The airline has rescheduled its international operations for this winter. The existing Amritsar-London-Toronto flight will now operate with a B777-300ER, four days a week out of Amritsar while on the remaining three days, the flight will originate from Delhi.

Also the existing thrice-weekly flight to Paris will now be operated with B777-200LR instead of Airbus A330, while four weekly flights to Tokyo will deploy a B777-200LR instead of A330.

Besides these, additional flights on the Mumbai-Riyadh and Delhi-Riyadh routes will take the total frequencies from India to Riyadh to 11 per week from the existing nine. All the 11 flights will be operated with B777-200ER aircraft instead of B747-400.

While the B777 300-ER has a total of 342 seats in three-class configuration, the B777-200LR has a capacity of 238 seats.

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