Much of the attention for Air India has been recently on their new flight to Israel which was launched last week, and also on the increase of frequencies to San Francisco.  There is one more hint that Air India had dropped in the weeks past, which does not seem to get much coverage at the moment. This is about Air India Sydney operations, which will get a boost this week!

Air India has been operating the only non-stop flights between India and Australia for a few years now. The trifecta of Delhi/Melbourne/Sydney and Delhi/Sydney/Melbourne did not work for them since it added to flight time, so eventually, Air India moved to a non-stop operation between Delhi and Sydney 4 days a week and Delhi and Melbourne 3 days a week.

Now, Air India is adding a 5th weekly flight to Sydney, starting on March 30, 2018. This will increase the frequency of the Delhi-Sydney flight to five times a week. The new flight will operate on Fridays, along with the other flights which already operated on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday.

On the return, Sydney – Delhi will then get five flights as well, operating on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday, on the return leg. Here is the schedule of the Australia operations.

AI302 DEL1315 – 0610+1SYD 788 x37
AI301 SYD0945 – 1835DEL 788 257
AI301 SYD1010 – 1900DEL 788 3
AI301 SYD1045 – 1935DEL 788 6

The new services continue to be operated by a two-class Boeing 787 Dreamliner, with 18 Business Class seats and 238 in Economy. Here is a review of the Air India Boeing 787 Dreamliner international service, which is pretty good, we must say.

Moving forward, Air India still has plans to add more frequencies on the Delhi – Melbourne – Delhi rotation as well, and they are working on getting the slots in order before they can announce such an expansion into Melbourne.

Bottomline

This is excellent news for Indians and Australian Indians moving between both the countries. Air India has some reasonable fares between India and Australia, and also has nice connections between Australia and UK via India. So, that makes it a cheap option to fly the Kangaroo route as well one hop in India.