Air India to connect Amritsar to Birmingham via Delhi on the B787

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Its been in the GDS systems for a few days already, however Air India finally came around to announcing their Amritsar (ATQ) – Delhi (DEL) – Birmingham (BHX)  flight on their new Boeing 787 planes from 1st August 2013. The new route will be operated 4 times a week on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, and is aiming to connect the burgeoning Indian community in Birmingham and Amritsar. Passengers from and to Amritsar will not have to change planes at Delhi.

This is the second new route for the B787 in August. The other one getting launched is the B787 flights to Australia.

Here are the timings of the flight, as per AirlineRoute.net :

AI113 DEL1330 – 1800BHX 788 x357
AI114 BHX2130 – 1005+1DEL 788 x357

And from Amritsar, it looks like this, via the Air India website:

AI113 ATQ1030 – 1800BHX 788 x357
AI114 BHX2130 – 1315+1ATQ 788 x357

However, in reasons unknown to me, the flight seems to be backtracking quite a bit and has a longer flight time than it should’ve had. You see, the flight goes from Amritsar to Delhi and then almost overflies Amritsar again to go over to Birmingham. Why not make it a DEL-ATQ-BHX flight instead, like they used to do in 2008 when Air India operated DEL-ATQ-BHX-YYZ?

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Redemptions are yet not loaded into the Flying Returns system, so there are no estimates yet on how much would these flights cost in terms of miles.

A big push by Air India to operating long and thin routes. Hope it works!

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Ajay Awtaney is the Founder and Editor of Live From A Lounge (LFAL), a pioneering digital platform renowned for publishing news and views about aviation, hotels, passenger experience, loyalty programs, travel trends and frequent travel tips for the Global Indian. He is considered the Indian authority on business travel, luxury travel, frequent flyer miles, loyalty credit cards and travel for Indians around the globe. Ajay is a frequent contributor and commentator on the media as well, including ET Now, BBC, CNBC TV18, NDTV, Conde Nast Traveller and many other outlets.

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Comments

  1. Air India has been losing money for a long time. The reason was its insistence on flying on some non-profitable routes and abandoning some profitable ones. There is plenty of passenger load in the towns and villages surrounding Amritsar. The most economical route could have been Amritsar – Birmingham – Amritsar, this is the shortest and the most fuel efficient route. But if Delhi has to be included, the route should be New Delhi – Amritsar – Birmingham – Amritsar – New Delhi. The present route is not fuel efficient.

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