Fares to US, Europe drop by 15-20% as Pakistan opens airspace

NEW DELHI: Airlines, both Indian and foreign, have quickly begun resuming suspended flights and operating diverted ones on the shorter and direct pre-February 27 routes after Pakistan re-opened its airspace on Tuesday. Flyers between India and the west will now increasingly get more choices for faster travel at lower airfares.
Travel portal Yatra COO Sharat Dhall said airfares to Europe and Americas have dropped by 15-20% and to Gulf by up to 30%."Economy return airfares on Delhi-Abu Dhabi sector have dropped from over Rs 30,000 to Rs 17,000. And for London, they have dropped from Rs 80,000 to Rs 63,000 now. We expect a growth in passenger traffic on these routes," he said.

The flight relief is coming in thick and fast. Aviation minister H S Puri on Wednesday tweeted that Air India will resume its tri-weekly Delhi-Amritsar-Birmingham service from August 15, with the flight operating on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

IndiGo's Delhi-Istanbul flight will be nonstop from Thursday with the fuelling stopover not required over the direct route. As a result, this flight's travel time for Delhi-Istanbul will reduce from 10.5 hours (factoring in the longer route to Doha and stopover there) to six-hours-45-minutes now. Return journey time will drop from nine to six hours.
German major Lufthansa will resume the straight route over Pakistan from Friday. George Ettiyil, Lufthansa Group's senior director sales for south Asia, said, "From Friday, all our flights from Frankfurt, Munich and Zurich will return to operate on regular routes to Delhi."

U S carrier United will resume its daily direct from Newark (EWR) to Delhi and Mumbai each from September 6, advancing them from the earlier announced October 26. "After reviewing and re-evaluating plans, our network operations and planning teams have determined that we will resume daily nonstop service between New York (Newark-EWR) and Delhi and Mumbai on September 6, 2019 (eastbound)," United spokesman Jonathan Guerin said.
Air Canada had earlier announced its suspended Delhi-Toronto daily will resume from August 1. Air India will also start Delhi-Toronto thrice-weekly direct from September 27. Delta, will resume Mumbai-New York JFK nonstop from December 22. Delta had operated this route from 2006 to 2009.