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United Air withdraws services from India

Our Bureau

NEW DELHI, Sept. 17

THE US carrier United Airlines, has withdrawn its operations from India following the terrorist attacks in the US, even as major international carriers reported near normalcy in operations between their home base and North America.

``As part of the 20 per cent reduction in UA capacity announced by the company on Sunday in the wake of last week's incidents, United's services to India are discontinued. As the airline cuts capacity and services in order to respond to the new business and service environments that follows last week's attacks, the Indian service is being discontinued,'' a statement issued by the airline states.

United Air which returned to India in April 2001 with a daily around-the-world flight in each direction offering connections to London and Hong Kong had already announced the withdrawal of two flights from October. However, UA had proposed providing a da ily non-stop link between Delhi and Chicago which also stands withdrawn.

Even as UA announced its withdrawal, Cathay Pacific announced that its flights to North America were operating as normal, while British Airways announced that it was operating 31 of its services to the US on Monday and hoped that the remaining daily US s ervices would return to normalcy soon.

Similarly, Lufthansa has said that on Monday all 26 scheduled and respective return flights to the US can be realised.

Meanwhile, Air France has announced that apart from reinforcing existing security measures, it would introduce two further specific measures rapidly including having specially-trained security agents on board some of its flights.

``A technical device will also be introduced enabling the airline to monitor, at regular intervals, that the flight is operating normally,'' the airline said in a statement.

Virgin Atlantic Airways also said that following the grant of Federal Aviation Authority (FAA) approval, the airline had started operating a full schedule of services except for flights to Boston airport which still remains closed.