Air India’s new flagship A350 makes ultra long-haul debut with Delhi-New York flights | Business News
Air India has introduced its new wide-body flagship—the Airbus A350 aircraft—on the Delhi-New York route, marking its ultra long-haul debut. The A350 is the first new aircraft type to be inducted by an Indian carrier in over a decade.
The development also marks the initiation of deployment of the A350 on Air India’s non-stop flights to North America, and the airline is set to use the aircraft on the Delhi-Newark route from January 2. The airline also announced that it will launch in the coming weeks inflight Wi-Fi service on international flights operated by the A350.
Most of Air India’s ultra long-haul flights are operated using the Boeing 777 aircraft, a number of which are in a rundown state and have resulted in the airline receiving brickbats from flyers.
Air India’s existing wide-body aircraft fleet comprises a large number of older legacy planes that were inducted when it was under government control.
“The deployment of this flagship product, which also recently commenced on the Delhi-London Heathrow route, marks a significant milestone in the airline’s post-privatization transformation program,” Air India said in a release.
Initially, the A350 will operate daily non-stop flights between Delhi and New York’s John F Kennedy Airport. The Air India A350 Delhi-Newark flights will be operated five times a week from January 2.
“Guest feedback on the aircraft and new customer experience has been exceptionally positive since it was launched on the Delhi-London Heathrow route in September, so we are excited to now bring it to New York. We are also looking forward to commencing the full interior refit of existing aircraft in 2025 which, together with the hundreds of new aircraft on order, will take Air India to new heights,” Air India’s Chief Executive Officer & Managing Director Campbell Wilson said.
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Air India has already embarked upon a $400-million interior refit programme for its legacy narrow-body jets. The refit programme for the wide-body fleet is expected to start early next year.
“The A350 flights offer travellers an elevated on-board experience, featuring enhanced meal menus, new serviceware, new bedding, and updated amenity kits for Business and Premium Economy guests, exclusively designed by Ferragamo and TUMI, respectively. The seats across all cabins on the A350 come with the latest-generation Panasonic eX3 IFE system and HD screens that offer more than 3,000 hours of entertainment content from around the world in 13 international and 8 Indian regional languages,” Air India said.
The carrier started receiving the long-range A350 aircraft—part of its mammoth order of 470 Airbus and Boeing planes—in December 2023. Of the 40 A350s ordered by the airline in 2023, six have already joined its fleet. In a standard three-class configuration, the A350-900 can carry 300-350 passengers and has a flight range of over 15,000 km, per data available on the Airbus website. Air India’s A350-900 aircraft come in a three-class cabin configuration with a total of 316 seats—28 in business class, 24 in premium economy, and 264 in economy class.
Air India’s massive order of 470 planes—250 with Airbus and 220 with Boeing—is key not just to the Air India group’s capacity and network expansion plans, but also to its ambition of offering a world-class product to flyers. Air India’s Airbus order consists of a total of 40 A350 planes and 210 planes of the A320neo family of narrow-body aircraft. The six A350s delivered to Air India so far were originally meant for Russian flag carrier Aeroflot, but were offered to the Indian carrier due to the West’s sanctions on Moscow over the war in Ukraine.
© The Indian Express Pvt Ltd
