Air India Express to spread wings

Mangaluru : Air India Express (IX) is all set to increase frequency of its flights from Mangaluru International Airport to Abu Dhabi to a daily flight from July 22, 2024. At present, IX operates 4 flights in a week to the capital city of United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. This will also result in uptick in daily flights to Bengaluru to 8, with IX and IndiGo restarting flights and IX routing aircraft for enhanced Abu Dhabi operations.

At present, IndiGo (4) and IX (1) operate a total of 5 flights daily on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector. From July 8, the daily flights on this sector will go up to 6, with IX restarting its second daily flight. This number will further increase to 7 from July 22 on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. IX will operate this additional flight onwards to Abu Dhabi from Mangaluru. The Bengaluru-Mangaluru leg will operate purely as a domestic flight and Abu Dhabi passengers will board at Mangaluru.

From August 1, flights on Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector will go up to 8 on three days in a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, respectively. IX will operate the third flight on these days to go with its two daily flights. IndiGo will operate 5 daily flights including the fifth flight which it announced in the summer schedule starting March 31. For operations on this sector that sees high passenger footfalls, IX uses the Boeing-737 Max and IndiGo uses the Airbus series aircraft.

On the Mumbai-Mangaluru sector, IX will operate the afternoon flight from July 16 in place of Air India, which will continue to operate the morning flight.

Currently, airlines from Mangaluru International Airport, operate 5 daily flights to Mumbai and Bengaluru, 2 daily flights to Chennai and Hyderabad respectively, one daily flight to Delhi, 3 weekly flights to Pune and 1 weekly flight to Tiruchirappalli. International flights operation includes 2 daily flights to Dubai by IX and 4 weekly flights by IndiGo, 4 weekly to Dammam, 3 weekly to Muscat, 2 weekly to Doha and Bahrain and 1 weekly each to Kuwait and Jeddah – all by IX.