Air India Airbus A350 flights now bookable

Air India Airbus A350 flights are now bookable. The aircraft will initially be deployed on domestic routes before going international. Let’s take a look at its domestic schedule.

Air India A350

Air India will showcase its first and only Airbus A350 aircraft (for now), registered VT-JRA, of which it took delivery late last month, at Wings India 2024 in Hyderabad from 18th to 21st January 2024.

After that, starting 22nd January 2024, Air India will operate scheduled domestic A350 flights. The schedule is as follows:

The aircraft will operate a Bengaluru-Mumbai-Chennai-Bengaluru-Chennai-Hyderabad-Bengaluru rotation on all days of the week except Tuesdays. The aircraft will operate just two flights on Tuesdays between Bengaluru and Delhi with a long ground time in Delhi, possibly for scheduled maintenance and crew training for Delhi-based crew.

It’s common for airlines to deploy a new long-haul aircraft type on domestic routes. This helps the crew to get familiarised with the aircraft before being deployed on long-haul routes. When Singapore Airlines first took delivery of Airbus A380 aircraft, it deployed the aircraft on flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, a route which the A380 is not meant to fly.

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It’s anyone’s guess why the Airbus A350 will be based in Bengaluru but there could be two reasons. First is that there is no overnight parking space available at Mumbai and Delhi due to a slew of aircraft groundings. The second is that the A350s will eventually be based at Bengaluru only, although this seems highly unlikely.

Air India will take delivery of five more A350-900s by March 2024. These all were originally intended to be delivered to Aeroflot but the airline was never able to take delivery of these aircraft due to the sanctions.

Air India’s A350s will feature a total of 316 seats: 28 private Business Class suites with full-flat beds, 24 Premium Economy seats with extra legroom and multiple other differentiating features, and 264 spacious Economy Class seats. All seats on the aircraft feature the latest-generation Panasonic eX3 in-flight entertainment system and HD screens. The seats are the same as those found on Aeroflot A350s but have some minor cosmetic changes to reflect the Air India branding.

Featured image by Air India

Are you thinking of flying Air India’s A350? Let me know in the comments section below.

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