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.
“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.