The Hindu Business Line : Continental Air aims 3rd spot for Delhi-NY flight

The world's fourth largest airline, the US-based Continental Airlines is working to have the Delhi-New York flight in the third spot from among the close to 300 weekly departures that the airlines operates from 28 cities in 15 countries in the Transatlantic region.

"My personal goal is to see the Delhi-Newark flight at the number 3 spot by 2007. During 2006, which technically will be the first full year for the flight as it was launched in November 2005, we have worked hard with the agents to build the flight. Hopefully in 2007, these relationships should have a snow ball effect and help propel the new route right to the top," the airline Senior Country Director, India, Mr Laurent Recoura, told Business Line.

The Delhi flight would come in after the London and Tel Aviv services operated by the airline. The ranking is decided on the basis of the profitability of the flight among the various services operated by the airline.

While refusing to reveal the financial statistics of the Delhi flight, Mr Laurent merely said that the new service had "exceeded the airline expectation in terms of quality of revenue and load factors''.

The airline, that launched the non-stop Delhi-Newark (New York) flight on November 2 last year, operates a Boeing 777 aircraft seating 283 passengers.

Asked about the future plans of the airline, Mr Recoura said that Continental would look to operate flights to Mumbai. "We are working on various scenarios. There is no specific agenda right now although we would like to fly to Mumbai. However, no date has yet been set for launching flights there," he added.