New Delhi: Air traffic between India and Europe resumed on Wednesday after a week of disruption caused by volcanic ashes, with Air India and Jet Airways operating flights in both directions to fly home stranded passengers.
According to official estimates, around 30,000 air travellers are stranded in India, primarily in Delhi and Mumbai. The number came down from 41,000 due to opening up of operations to the US and Canada two days ago.
Air India began its European operations Wednesday, launching its dailies from Delhi to Paris and Frankfurt. It would resume normal services from tomorrow on sectors like Delhi-London-Delhi, Delhi-Frankfurt-Delhi, Mumbai-London-Mumbai, Delhi-New York-Delhi, Mumbai-New York- Mumbai, Mumbai-Chicago-Mumbai, Amritsar-London-Toronto-London- Amritsar and Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Newark-Mumbai.
Air India announced an additional Mumbai-London-Mumbai flight on Friday to clear the backlog of passengers. Jet Airways too resumed its flights to London from Delhi and Mumbai and relaunched its hub operations at Brussels. It would now connect Newark and Toronto with Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai through Brussels.
The private carrier also planned to launch an additional Mumbai-London-Mumbai service soon. Kingfisher Airlines, which had cancelled its services for today, would commence flights between Delhi, Mumbai and London from Thursday.
Air India's plane which was stuck in Frankfurt, arrived here Wednesday via Cairo carrying stranded passengers. Two of its Boeing 777-300s, caught in London, flew out to Toronto and Amritsar.
According to latest government figures, about 3,000 passengers who had booked for America and Europe on Air India were stranded in Delhi, around 1,300 in Amritsar and about 2,300 passengers in Mumbai. These numbers are expected to come down significantly after normal operations starting Thursday.
Jet Airways, which operated its flight via Athens, had cleared its backlog for the US and Canada. Jet had operated to the US and Canada via Athens on Tuesday.
A total of 6,000 passengers booked on Jet Airways for Europe are stranded in Mumbai and Delhi, official data shows. German carrier Lufthansa and Air France had yesterday launched their services by operating flights to Munich, Amsterdam and Paris.
Six days of air traffic disruption in the European airspace, caused by the spread of volcanic ash from Iceland, has led to an estimated revenue loss of USD 1.7 billion to the global aviation industry.
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