Comments
United Airlines would love to add flights from the US to India but is unable to do so as it cannot fly over Russian airspace, the airline's chief executive officer, Scott Kirby, said.
"We were the largest airline between the US and India pre-pandemic. We would be larger today. We were planning to serve four cities in India with as many as seven flights per day but all the flights have to go over Russia. It is not about what we want to do. We have to fly over Russia to get to those cities and we can't," Kirby told reporters on the sidelines of the IATA annual general meeting in Dubai earlier this month.
Prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the closure of its airspace to American carriers, United flew four daily flights between the US and India. In 2021 it operated the maximum number of flights between the two countries. But with Russian airspace out of bounds it was forced to curtail growth plans.
Currently United operates a single daily flight between Newark and Delhi. Plans to start a San Francisco-Bengaluru service, too, have been deferred.
United gets passenger feed from India via Lufthansa and Swiss hubs at Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich but its own capacity and market share in India has shrunk after 2022.
On the other hand, Air India has seized the advantage and added flights to the US. According to aviation analytics Cirium, Air India is scheduled to operate 430 flights between the two countries in June, an increase of 70 per cent over January 2022.
Around 6.5 million passengers flew between India and the US in CY 2023. Yet non-stop traffic between India and the US constitutes only 20-25 per cent of total volume. In 2023, Emirates was the largest airline serving the India-US market followed by Air India, Qatar Airways, Etihad and United.
Air Canada adds India services
While United has curtailed its flights, Air Canada has announced it is expanding its services to India in the winter schedule. This includes four weekly non-stop flights between Toronto and Mumbai — the only direct service on the route. A new service is also being introduced between Calgary and Delhi via London. Overall the airline is adding 40 per cent seat capacity to India from late-October through new flights and increase in frequencies from Montreal.
"India is an important market for Air Canada, reflecting longstanding and growing family and trade ties between our two countries," said Mark Galardo, executive vice president (Revenue and Network Planning), Air Canada.
Air Canada will deploy a Boeing 777-200LR aircraft on the Mumbai route. The Mumbai-Toronto service will be Air Canada's second longest route by distance after Vancouver-Singapore.
Air Canada, too, cannot fly over Russia and flights to Mumbai will take routes depending on a range of operational conditions including enroute weather, the airline said. "The Boeing 777-200LR is one of the most capable aircraft currently available and we expect this flight will be a success," it added.
Comments
Comments
Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.
We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.