Airline services India update: El-Al, Air India, Saudi Arabian, Turkish THY

A host of new and updated services to and from India announced this week.

Saudi Arabian Airlines (Saudia) will launch new flights to Bangalore, Lucknow, and Kozhikode (Calicut) over the next few days. The airline has commenced operating three flights a week to Lucknow; two flights a week to Bangalore from today, March 30, 2009 and four flights a week to Kozhikode, starting tomorrow March 31, 2009.

Israel's national air-carrier El Al Israel Airlines is planning to enhance connectivity between India and Israel by launching twice a week Tel Aviv-New Delhi service from summer. At present El Al Airlines operates three flights a week from Mumbai to Tel Aviv and has a commercial tie-up with national air-carrier Air India and private airline Jet Airways for onward connections to other Indian cities. A spokesman for the airline indicated that El Al was considering Bangalore as a destination, but at a later stage.

Air India has introduced a daily Delhi-Chicago flight via Frankfurt using the new 342 seat Boeing 777-300ER in a three class configuration. The Delhi-Chicago flight will actually originate from Hyderabad (the GMR-UPA connection at work?), while passengers from Kolkata and Amritsar will complete through check-in, immigration and customs formalities at their respective airports.

Turkish Airlines, has increased its seat capacity (measured in ASKs) by 24 per cent and frequencies by 12 per cent from its new summer schedule which went in to effect yesterday. New Delhi, Bombay and Chicago flights are now upgraded to a daily operation. For more details of the changes click here.