Air India has announced that it will offer nonstop flights between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport in Mumbai, India, and Melbourne International Airport beginning December 15.
DALLAS — Air India (AI) has announced that it will offer nonstop flights between Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (BOM) in Mumbai, India, and Melbourne International Airport (MEL). The new flight is part of AI's global route expansion, is set to commence service on December 15, 2023, and will add 40,000 seats per year.
The Mumbai-Melbourne route boasts an enormous market size, with approximately 433,000 roundtrip passengers recorded in 2022. Furthermore, the Indian community in the Australian state of Victoria is estimated at over 200,000, which is around 40% of the total Indian diaspora in Australia. AI's new route will respond to the growing demand for VFR (visiting friends and relatives) and business and leisure travel to the region.
AI's new route will supplement its daily flights to Melbourne and Sydney (SYD) from Delhi (DEL). In total, the carrier flies 28 frequencies each week between Australia and India.
The airline will operate the three weekly flights (Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays) using a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, which seats 256 passengers in two cabins: 18 lie-flat seats in business class and 238 seats in economy. The airline currently has a fleet of 27 787-8 Dreamliners. The Mumbai-Melbourne nonstop will follow the following schedule:
AI's new route enables seamless two-way connections between London Heathrow (LHR) and Melbourne through Mumbai. Moreover, the flight time between BOM and MEL is timed so passengers from 17 Indian cities can fly to and from Melbourne through Delhi.
Air India Chief Commercial & Transformation Officer Nipun Aggarwal commented via an Air India press release, "We look forward to launching the only nonstop flight between Mumbai and Melbourne. This is a great step forward in our ongoing transformation program, which, among other aspects, aims at connecting India to more of the world with nonstop flights. We are excited to showcase the positively changing Air India flying experience to travelers on this route, of which great Indian hospitality will remain a cornerstone."
The airline last served Melbourne in 1981 on a hopping service. Now, over 40 years later, AI will return to serving the BOM-MEL route, albeit nonstop.
Featured image: VT-ANK, Air India, Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner. Photo: Tony Bordelais/Airways
