Air India to start daily flight services on this route from today. Details here

Air India will start daily flight operations for its passengers on the Mumbai Coimbatore from tomorrow i.e. 3 May. The A320-Neo fleet flight will operate daily on all seven days. 

Flight AI 609 will depart from Mumbai at 6:30 am and arrive in Coimbatore at 8:20 am. The return AI 608 flight will depart Coimbatore at 9 am and reach Mumbai by 11 am. The same flight will also allow passenger to fly to London and San Francisco from Mumbai, the airline has said as cited by News18. The re-introduction decision was taken by the carrier to provide seamless travel to the passengers.

Also Read: DGCA issues show cause notices to Air India CEO Campbell Wilson, head of flight safety

In another news, the tussle between the management of Air India and the pilots seems to be extended for some more days as Air India has sent out a strongly worded email, including a directive of disciplinary and monetary action against its pilots, in case of delay in licence renewal or Airport Entry Pass (AEP). This came after on 17 April, the carrier rolled out a revamped compensation structure for its pilots and cabin crew, which has since been rejected by the two pilot unions - Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) and Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) - on the grounds that the airline, in alleged violation of the labour practices, did not consult them before finalising the new contracts.

Meanwhile, as latest market analysis report of the International Air Transport Association ( ATA) said that India is fast emerging as a key global aviation market. India's domestic air travel has continued to grow robustly and as of February, it was a mere 2.2 percent shy of reaching pre-pandemic levels measured by passenger revenue kilometres (PRK).

India's domestic passenger market also led the rest of the domestic markets in the passenger load factor (PLF) metric in the report which includes the US, China and Japanese domestic markets. It has been the top domestic market measured by PLF for the last four months achieving PLFs of 81.6 per cent in February, 85.2 per cent in January, 88.9 per cent in December 2022, and 87.9 per cent in November 2022.

(With inputs from agencies)