AIE to operate 27 addnl flights from Kerala, Mangalore to Gulf

Air India Express (AIE) today said it would operate 27 additional flights from Kerala and Mangalore to various Gulf destinations from October 28.

Announcing its winter schedule, the airline said it has increased services from Kerala and Mangalore airports to Middle East destinations from 92 a week to 119 a week.

As per schedule, Kochi will connect cities of Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Bahrain, Doha and Sharjah daily, Muscat thrice a week.

Passengers from here will be offered convenient connections to Dammam via Kozhikode daily, and to Kuwait three times a week, with both boarding cards issued in Kochi and the baggages tagged to the ultimate destination, AIE said.

Kozhikode would connect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Bahrain, Doha, Dammam and Muscat daily; Salalah twice a week, Kuwait thrice a week and one weekly service to the city of Al-Ain, AIE said in a press release here.

Thiruvananthapuram would connect Abu Dhabi and Dubai daily, thrice weekly to Muscat, four times a week to Sharjah and twice a week to the city of Salalah in Oman.

Mangalore will see the budget airline flying twice daily to Dubai, three times a week to Muscat, Abu Dhabi and twice weekly to Doha and Bahrain.

On the domestic sector, AIE will operate daily flights to Mumbai from Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram, besides thrice weekly from Kozhikode to Mumbai and back.

'This is the first time ever since its inception in 2005 that Air India Express is deploying so many services from the cities of Kerala and Mangalore to the Gulf and back', an airlines spokesperson said.

This increase in capacity would help stablise fares to a very large extent, benefitting the travelling public of this region, he said.