Air India explores new routes for North America flights amid airspace curbs

Air India is looking at various alternatives for its North America flights from the national capital, including operating the services with a technical stop in a city within India, to reduce operational costs that have shot up due to the Pakistan airspace closure, sources said on Friday.

Currently, Tata Group-owned Air India operates 71 flights a week to North American destinations and out of them, 54 services are from the national capital.

The airline flies to Chicago, New York, Washington, San Francisco, and Newark in the US, and to Toronto and Vancouver in Canada.

In his message to the staff on Friday, Air India MD and CEO Campbell Wilson said there have been a number of network-related developments and the airline has temporarily adjusted some of its Europe and US routes in response to recent airspace restrictions, as well as adding a few technical stops.

 

"We have made good progress in identifying other alternatives so aim to reduce the number of overseas tech-stops, and restore more non-stop operations, soon," he said, without disclosing specific details.