Loss-making Air India’s regional subsidiary Alliance Air on Wednesday announced the expansion of its services to enhance connectivity to more tier-II cities from metros, starting Friday. The airline is expanding operations at a time when major domestic carriers are struggling to operate even half of their allowed capacity amid demand slump due to the coronavirus pandemic.
Continuing its efforts to bolster regional connectivity, the airline is giving multiple flight options to enhance connectivity between metros and tier-II cities, starting July 24, Alliance Air said in a release. With this, passengers will have connectivity options to Jharsuguda from Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, and Raipur with a daily flight, the airline said.
Nashik will get connectivity from Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, and Pune with a seven-day-a-week service while Mysuru gets enhanced connectivity from Cochin and Hyderabad with daily flight service, it said. The aircraft in all the via/connected flights will remain the same and the passenger does not need to change the aircraft, the airline said in the release.
Meanwhile, Budget carrier SpiceJet on Thursday said it has been designated as the “Indian scheduled carrier,” to operate flights to the United States. SpiceJet would be the first Indian budget carrier to operate services to the United States.
This has been done in terms of the Air Services Agreement between India and the United States, SpiceJet said in the regulatory filing.
Currently, only the national carrier Air India is operating flights on India-US routes.
“This is to inform you that in terms of the Air Services Agreement between the Government of India and the Government of the United States of America, SpiceJet has been designated as Indian scheduled carrier to operate on agreed services between India and the USA,” SpiceJet said in the regulatory filing.
However, New coronavirus cases in India rose 45,720 in the past 24 hours, pushing the total Covid-19 tally in India over 12 lakh mark today, while the total number of recoveries crossed 7.82 lakh, according to the Union Health Ministry data. The death toll due to the disease rose to 29,861 with 1,129 fatalities reported in one day.
The data updated today showed that the total number of COVID-19 cases stands at 12,38,635. There are 4,26,167 active cases in the country, while 7,82,606 people have recovered and one person has migrated. In the past 24 hours, a record 29,557 patients were declared cured. This has further expanded the difference between those who are active COVID patients and the recovered persons to 3,56,439.
