Air India is big time expanding their network and opening new stations.
Air India launched Delhi – San Francisco 3 times a week in December 2015, and then doubled frequency to 6 times a week in November 2016. They started a fifth freedom flight between London and Newark, by launching an Ahmedabad – London – Newark flight. They launched flights to Madrid as well in December 2016 and took over the Delhi – Vienna flights from Austrian. I’d say that is a spectacular show given they are going in all directions.
We earlier wrote about the Air India flight to Washington DC from Delhi. This is going live on 7 July 2017 and is already up for sale on the Air India network. The flight will be 3x per week to start with. Like I wrote last, the airline was planning flights to Dallas and Los Angeles as well, apart from other stations in Europe.
Just today, Air India confirmed some new plans of theirs. They will be opening flights between Mumbai and Frankfurt, as well as flights to Nairobi. At the moment, Air India operates a flight between Delhi and Frankfurt, so the Mumbai traffic only has Lufthansa to deal with to get to FRA. The new flights will be both operated three times a week by the Boeing 787.
#AIUpdate: #AirIndia to launch thrice a week flt (Boeing 787) connecting #NBO & #FRA ex #BOM in July 2017. Stay tuned for updates!
— Air India (@airindiain) May 17, 2017
I can’t say I am amused with the news. With Air India’s flights to Tel Aviv getting postponed or perhaps junked altogether, the airline has to deploy their new planes fast, and what better than to add some long and thin routes quickly.
I’ll post more details about the routes when they are officially announced by the airline on the GDS.
BOM-FRA or BOM-NBO are neither long nor thin. But you are correct, TLV is geopolitically speaking too difficult to make work.