SME Times News Bureau | 18 May, 2019
Seeking to fill the void created by Jet Airways' suspension of
operations and peak summer travel demand, state-run Air India has added
capacity on the busy Delhi-Dubai, Mumbai-Dubai and Delhi-Mumbai sectors.
India-Dubai
is considered one of the most lucrative sectors as demand is always
very high on the route due to high business as well as leisure travel.
About half a dozen local and domestic carriers connect 20 Indian cities
with the city-state.
The new flights would be launched in the first week of June using B787 airplanes. Bookings of all the new flights have started.
"The
flights to Dubai would be started utilizing the additional overseas
flying rights by the government recently," said an official.
Preferring
Air India over the private carriers, the civil aviation ministry
earlier this week decided to allot about 5,700 weekly seats to the
airline out of grounded Jet Airways' unused quota on the lucrative
India-Dubai route. The public sector airline was also promised over
5,000 seats on India-Qatar route besides about 4,600 additional seats to
and from London.
Air India currently has 13.1 per cent market
share in the domestic market. It carried 15.19 lakh passengers in the
month of March this year.
