Air India had launched their Delhi – San Francisco operations back in 2015, which became one of their most profitable routes and they were operating 9-10X weekly as the route matured. United followed into their footsteps as well and launched Delhi – SFO of their own as well in 2018. Now, as the race to launch non-stops between India and the USA starts in right earnest, Air India seems to be taking a one-up on United for their upcoming San Francisco – Bengaluru non-stop flights.
Bangalore used to have a routing via Delhi so far, and it has been a long-standing ask of Bengaluru travellers to get them a direct non-stop flight. Now, Air India is planning to launch its own Bengaluru – San Francisco non-stop flight in the coming months.
Air India is planning to launch its Bengaluru – San Francisco non-stop flight, clocking over 16 hours from January 11, 2021. The flight will operate two times a week with the Boeing 77L, beating United by about five months on the launch of this routing. The plane will operate right at the edge of the envelope of the Boeing 77L, and will be a full 1,000 miles longer than the DEL-SFO route.
This flight is expected to save at least 5 hours on this route (2.5 hours for Bangalore – Delhi and about 2.5 hours to connect). Here are the flight details:
AI 175 BLR1430 – 1700SFO 14 77L
AI 176 SFO2030 – 0230+2BLR 25 77L
When business air travel comes back, Air India will find enough spoils on this route to get some business travellers compared to United, which plans to put a superior Polaris product on the route.
Similarly, Air India is planning to launch a Hyderabad – Chicago non-stop flight as well on January 9, 2021, for once a week operation.
AI107 HYD1250 – 1805ORD 5 77L
AI108 ORD2130 – 0040(+1)HYD 3 77L
Bottomline
Air India San Francisco to Bangalore and Hyderabad to Chicago non-stop flights will be launched in January 2021. The first one will be with a Boeing 777 Long Range aircraft. This flight is expected to complement the Delhi – San Francisco operation, which is five times a week at the moment.
This is excellent news for those who frequent this route and would find savings for about 5 hours to get to their eventual destination. What do you think of this route launch?
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Air India Bangalore to San Francisco
When Air India is flying from Hyderabad and BANGALORE connecting direct flights to US, cities Why not Chennai?
Why Air India is not connecting Chennai to any important cities in US? Chennai is southern gate way also hub of automobile industries, why they don’t see Chennai in india map? This is really not fair.
Why not Newark, New Jersey to Bengaluru.
@Shubha there may be no business case for that route. Maybe?
Hope AI uses better planes than sfo-del. They are a disaster even in business class.
Air India is always caring for travellers and students.But it has not yet considered students and other Indians in spain.Hope it will start operations sometime in January.
How come I don’t see the equipment on the HYD ORD sector as yet? There are no flights scheduled from Jan 9 According to expert flyer and AI website.
It’s really a great news by Air India. SFO to Bangalore is a long awaited news. We are eagerly awaiting this incredible flight journey from SFO to Bangalore from January 2021. It will save lots of time to many passengers. Bangalore is a silicon City having more number of travellers to California & Newyork… Great news indeed. Keep up the promise & assurance Air India.
AI biz class is antique…2-3-2 config def needs to b upgraded on these 16hr flights…
Just curious. Is there any special connection between Hyderabad and Chicago that I’m not aware of? It seems like an unusual route and I’m wondering what’s behind it.
They used to operate ORD-DEL-HYD till now, now they’re removing the DEL stop. Air India flies to a lot of places, but usually stops in Delhi or Mumbai before going to another city, so travelling to other cities is usually inconvenient.
Hyderabad caters to most of the Telugu speaking population of the US, who are one of the largest demographic of Indians. It’s also home to a lot of tech businesses and couple of American companies like Amazon too.
There are no non stop flights from Hyderabad or other cities nearby. Delhi is a 2 hour flight, and the way the old flight was, you had to clear immigration, and collect and drop bags, plus waiting at an odd hour or they may have changed it, but either way it involved getting off the plane too, and the journey would be longer.
You could avoid that by taking EK ET, QR and have a much better transit experience + clear immigration at Hyderabad, where lines are considerably shorter. Seats on this new flight will be cheaper given it’s non stop, and it beats the convenience for families who struggle to take kids on a journey with a layover. Also they do have codesharing with UA, so other domestic connections will be smooth, to go from a remote town in the US with one stop to your home city.
Yes, finally!
Air India routes way too many flights through Delhi. With the fog and visibility issues, bad layover times and immigration queues, the non-stop flights are much better.
They’re trying to complete with Delta’s Seattle flight, but Air India’s hard product can use a little improvement.
Looks like the contest is heating up .Expect more routes to Mumbai and Chennai