India's national carrier, Air India has announced that it has decided to start air service from New Delhi to Washington Dulles International Airport, from December 1, 2009. The announcement was made on 19th October The airline said that a flight will depart from Washington at 12.10 pm and stop at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport. From there, it will fly non-stop to New Delhi and arrive at Indira Gandhi International Airport at 4.45 pm, the following afternoon.
In the coming year i.e. 2010, Air India is expected to join the Star Alliance airlines network. Star Alliance is a global alliance of over two dozen airlines, which code-share flights, provide seamless transfers to passengers within their network and cooperate among each other on engineering, IT, infrastructural and other issues. The support of Star Alliance will help Air India increase its presence in US market.
Star Alliance is anchored in part by United Airlines, which as a partner, could feed lots of passengers from Washington Dulles International Airport to Air India. The airline official told that they will be using Boeing 777-200LR on this route. It may be recalled that Air India has never operated on this route before. At the same time, no other carrier operates on this route at present.
