Air India 777-200LR. (Image: Wikimedia Commons)
There’s no official confirmation yet, but news reports from India say that national carrier Air India might have its eye on a new route to San Francisco that would be the world’s longest non-stop.
Giving credence to the reports is Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s trip to the U.S. this week, which includes a visit to Silicon Valley companies like Google HQ in Mountain View and Tesla Motors in Fremont, California.
The Times of India says that Air India wants to link San Francisco with India’s tech center at Bengaluru (Bangalore), using a long-range 777-200. That’s a trip of just over 8,700 miles.
The newspaper noted that would beat out Qantas’ 8,531 mile non-stop between Dallas/Ft. Worth and Sydney, the current record-holder. The Bengaluru-SFO flight would take 17 to 18 hours. It would also top Emirates’ planned new route from Dubai to Panama City next year, which will be 8,550 miles.
The newspaper said if Air India doesn’t go for the Bengaluru-San Francisco route, it might opt for Delhi-SFO instead.
We’ve heard Air India talk about nonstops to San Francisco before, but it’s never amounted to more than talk. When we asked our contacts at SFO about the possibility, they played it down saying that they had no confirmation, but were “encouraged by these statements.”
Related: Etihad vs “Jetihad”
Air India is a member of the Star Alliance.
Air India’s only current U.S. routes are to Chicago and New York.
In April of this year, the FAA said it had determined that India is now in compliance with the International Civil Aviation Organization’s safety standards for air travel, and thus it reinstated a Category 1 safety rating for the country.
That change means India‘s airlines are once again permitted to add new flights to the U.S., something they hadn’t been able to do after the country was downgraded to Category 2. That happened following a 2012 FAA audit that found some deficiencies in India’s aviation system.
Have you ever flown Air India? How was it? Would you fly Air India for 17-18 hours?
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Problem for Air India now that it’s confirmed to be DEL – no one wants to chage planes at an Indian airport to go to an interior city. If you are going to change planes, better at Dubai.
Anything is better than United
I haven’t flown Air India, but I regularly fly United from SFO to Frankfurt. I have noticed that a pretty significant percentage of people on the plane are connecting to flights to India. So maybe the right question is not whether someone would spend 18 hours on Air India from SFO to Bengaluru, but whether someone would prefer to spend 11 hours on United to Frankfurt, and then another 9 hours on Air India (or Lufthansa) to India.
I am an Indian and I would gladly fly Air India in Y over (J)Etihad, United, American, Lufthansa. Customer service is lousy; but the seats are more comfortable and food is orders of magnitude better than the crap that United serves.
Some might argue that San Francisco already has the world’s longest nonstop flights, if you count waiting at the gate on foggy days as part of the travel time.
In any case, I cannot imagine sitting in an economy seat for 18 hours. You’d think this would violate some international treaty on basic human rights. I’d rather ride on one of the wings.
I doubt the tech companies would want their employees to fly Air India. They are simply a lousy airline in every category to fly. I suppose they could make DEL work with the large population of expats, but BLR no way.
Every Indian I have ever talked to rules out Air India as an option to fly anywhere, even if it is in their preferred frequent flyer alliance. This is a particularly bad route for them to attempt, because there is enormous competition flying trans-Pacific _AND_ trans-Atlantic to serve India from the American West Coast, putting their fragile reputation into even more focus.