Air India plans to fly Delhi-Los Angeles non-stop soon

NEW DELHI: Air India is going to increase the frequency of its nonstops to the US and Australia, apart from linking Los Angeles directly to Delhi by this summer. It also plans to tackle the frequent failure of the back-of-seat in-flight entertainment systems in premium classes of longhauls by giving personal electronic devices, like tablets, with content for the duration of the flight.

These are among the things that Air India's new chairman Pradeep Singh Kharola is looking at implementing at the earliest. "Our priority is to further improve on-time performance and increase our load factor (aircraft occupancy). Our direct flights to the US and Australia are our USP but the passenger load factor is only 50%. We will try to see how to increase that," Kharola, a 1985 IAS officer of Karnataka cadre, said.

AI uses Boeing 777 for the nonstops to US (New York, Newark, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington) and B-787 Dreamliners to Australia.

While the Dreamliners are new, issues frequently surface in the entertainment systems of the relatively older B-777. AI is going to get three B-777s by February. Two of them will be for VVIP use and the third may be used to start the Delhi-LA service.

Air India