Mumbai: Air India plans to begin extra extremely long-haul flights, primarily to the US cities, because it expands the plane fleet with extra A350s and B777s, based on sources.

The Tata Group-owned airline, which can also be within the technique of consolidating its operations, together with by the proposed merger of Vistara, is seeking to launch direct flights from Indian cities to Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas, the sources within the know mentioned.

Currently, Air India is the only Indian airline working providers to the US with flights to Washington, New York, Newark, San Francisco and Chicago.

The sources informed PTI that Air India is planning to begin flights to Seattle, Los Angeles and Dallas in the course of the winter schedule of 2024-25.

While A350 is more likely to be deployed for providers to Seattle, B777 is likely to be operated for flights to Los Angeles and Dallas.

These can be extremely long-haul flights, which usually signifies that the period is over 16 hours.

Air India spokesperson didn’t provide any feedback on the plans.

Besides flights to the US cities, Air India is mulling all B777 operations to London Heathrow from each Delhi and Mumbai, as soon as it inducts two extra of such planes in its fleet.

At current, the flights to London are operated with B787 from Delhi and Mumbai.

According to the sources, the airline will start flights to London Gatwick from Bengaluru subsequent month with a Boeing Dreamliner.

An airline official mentioned that whereas launching flights to new locations is at all times on the radar, it’s also topic to varied components, together with availability of pilots and crew.

Last yr, Air India positioned orders for 470 planes with Airbus and Boeing.