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Delta Airlines to return to India?
May 18th 2018
Delta Air Lines may return to India. Following the U.S.-United Arab Emirates (UAE) Open Skies agreement, outspoken Delta CEO, Ed Bastian, told CNBC: “We’ve been hurt in India.” Read More » He added “routes dominated by the ‘Big Three’ Gulf carriers were ripe for our [Delta’s] opportunity to fly”.
Delta terminated flights to Mumbai in 2015 because of a large capacity increase into the sub-continent by Emirates Airline, Etihad Airways and Qatar Airways that made the Delta route unsustainable.
The Atlanta-headquartered carrier signed a strategic partnership with India’s Jet Airways and Air France-KLM in 2016, which could provide the U.S. airline with a significant domestic and regional network on Jet Airways should it return to India. Jet does not fly to the U.S. and Emirates and Etihad have recently cut capacity to North America.
Delta now has more fuel-efficient aircraft to operate from the U.S. to India since it began accepting delivery of 25 on-order A350-900s. It used to fly B777-200s to India.
