Around the world in [80 days] 32 hours, from Delhi to San Francisco and back

It no longer takes 80 days to travel around the world – about 32 hours are enough.

Since October 15, many have already made the trip with the state-owned Air India on its Delhi-San Francisco non-stop flight over the Pacific Ocean. While the onward journey takes 15 hours and 55 minutes, the return, traversing the Atlantic Ocean clocks 15 hours 51 minutes.

At Air India, planning for the around-the-world service began almost nine months before the first flight. The date was significant — on October 15, 1932, JRD Tata flew Tata Airlines air mail service on the Karachi, Ahmedabad, Bombay, Bellary, Madras routes launching services of what eventually became Air India.

The around-the-world service now sees an Air India Boeing 777-200 Extended Range aircraft taking off from Indira Gandhi International airport in Delhi and head towards Bangladesh, the northern part of Myanmar into China, South Korea, the Japanese and then the Fukuoka airspace before entering South of Alaska and flying South East to San Francisco. In the return journey, the flight comes back over Canada and Europe to each Delhi, thereby going around the globe.

The flight on the Delhi-San Francisco route was launched on October 2015, and the original route saw it flying from Delhi and to San Francisco via Pakistan, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Russia, the upper part of Sweden, the northern Iceland, part of Greenland after which it entered north Canada. When Air India decided to change the route, the team “did not need to work very hard on it,” says Captain A Kathpalia, Executive Director, Operations. However, a few issues needed to be kept in mind when finalizing the route. “We chose a route based on computer modelling. This is not only the shortest in distance but also in terms of time and winds. We planned a route where we take the maximum advantage of the tail wind or avoid the headwinds,” Kathpalia explained.

The biggest difference in the new route is the time spent over high seas. “We fly over fewer countries as compared to the earlier flight when we flew over the Atlantic to go West from Delhi,” says Kathpalia.

It also meant that the airline had to pay a lot more over-flying charges. With the change in the routing, Air India will save over ₹3 crore annually on over-flying charges.“Besides, we have a data link with the ground so the communication is not so much voice based over the high seas. We just log in to the ATC and they keep updating the position. It makes life easier not just for the pilots but also the people down on the ground,” Kathpalia says.

This flight also helps India meet its international carbon emission norms as it saves about 13 tonnes of fuel and “that is many zeros added for the carbon emission,” adds Kathpalia.

This is the longest among the three long, non-stop flights from India that Air India operates, the others being Delhi-Chicago and Delhi-New York.

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