Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Thursday, Mar 20, 2003
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Thursday, Mar 20, 2003 |
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Airlines Logistics - Airlines Air India operating specials to Kuwait Our Bureau
MUMBAI, March 19 AIR India has started operating special flights to Kuwait to meet the sudden demand from Indian nationals seeking to return home in the wake of the Iraqi crisis. According to the plans announced by the airline on Wednesday, three special flights to Kuwait are scheduled to leave Wednesday evening/ Thursday morning. Two of the three extra flights will be operated on the Mumbai-Kuwait-Mumbai sector by Boeing 747-200 aircraft, with a capacity of 400 each. The third flight, an A310 with a capacity of 200, will be operated on the Mumbai-Kuwait-Kochi-Mumbai sector. This was decided at a meeting chaired by the Managing Director and attended by operational staff, among others. The first flight leaves Mumbai at 7 p.m. on Wednesday evening to reach Kuwait at 8:30 p.m. (local time). It departs Kuwait at 9:30 p.m. (LT) to return to Mumbai at 3:25 a.m. on Thursday morning. The second flight leaves Mumbai at 11:00 p.m. on Wednesday to arrive in Kuwait at 00:30 a.m. on Thursday morning. It will depart from Kuwait at 1:30 a.m. (LT) to reach Mumbai at 7:25 a.m. (LT) on Thursday. The third flight, the A310 service will leave Mumbai at 3:20 am on Thursday morning to arrive in Kuwait at 5:00 a.m. (LT). It leaves Kuwait at 6 a.m. (LT) to arrive in Kochi at 1.10 p.m. It returns to Mumbai at 5:45 p.m. on Thursday evening. An AI spokesperson said here that the airline was monitoring the situation and would operate additional flights as and when needed from Kuwait or any other point in the Gulf region. He clarified that the three flights scheduled for this evening were not part of its emergency evacuation plans. Passengers taking the three special flights would pay only one-way fares to avail of the service. The airline would continue to operate normal services to Bahrain, Dammam and Kuwait till such time that airports in these countries were available for flight operations, he added. The airline had also set up a control cell in Mumbai (telephone no: 28318861) to enable passengers to check back with the airline for any changes in its flight schedule. Effective Tuesday, AI's West-bound flights are overflying Iran, a route that entails an additional distance of 36 nautical miles (five minutes in flying time). Should this route also become unavailable in the days to come, the airline has identified five alternative routes that will entail additional distances ranging from 63 to 1,014 nautical miles, and an additional flying time of 15 minutes to two hours. This airway will be followed by all airlines operating between South-East Asia and Europe.
The latest information on the airline's flight schedules can be accessed at its Web site: www.airindia.com.
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