AI European Base
Taken from sify.com
BUSINESS_STANDARD
Air india board to discuss international base plan
Mihir Mishra | 2010-04-06 02:00:00
The first board meeting of Air India with four new independent directors inducted last month will discuss a proposal for a base in Europe for its flights to the United States. The meeting, to be held on Tuesday, will discuss the viability of the cities of Dublin in Ireland, Birmingham in the United Kingdom, Barcelona in Spain and Copenhagen in Denmark as a base for Air India flights from India to the US.
"The viability of the new destinations will be reviewed in the first board meeting with the new directors and only after that will any decision will be taken," said a senior ministry official, who did not want to be identified.
Air India operates four daily flights from New Delhi and Mumbai to New York, Newark, Washington and Chicago.
Air India had earlier decided upon Frankfurt in Germany as an international hub but gave up the idea after it found the place to be too expensive to operate from.
"The cost per passenger at the Frankfurt terminal is at 10 per cent of the fare charged per passenger, which is high by every standard. This forced us to look for other cheaper destinations," said a senior Air India official, who did not want to be identified.
The new 13-member Air India board has Mahindra & Mahindra Managing Director Anand Mahindra, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry General Secretary Amit Mitra, industrialist Harsh Neotia and Air Chief Marshal (Retd) Fali H Major as independent directors. They have joined the airline for a period of three years.
After the new terminal at the Delhi airport starts commercial operations, the merged entity will make Delhi its hub. Air India operates 12 international flights from Delhi and 17 from Mumbai, a large chunk of which is expected to shift to the capital now. Erstwhile Air India had its hub in Mumbai and erstwhile Indian Airlines' hub was Delhi......
Lets just hope BHX manages to bag this one its just that runway may go against us! Certainly BHX has a lot of VFR traffic much more than any of the other cities mentioned and certainly less US traffic than DUB,CPH or BCN.
THE ABOVE IS TAKEN FROM THE BIRMINGHAM THREAD.
Anyone like to enlighten me as to why our glorious airport is not in the frame?????????????