NEW DELHI: Air India’s popular nonstops between Delhi and North America have just become a lot faster by cutting about an hour in flying time, thanks to the Hindu Kush route.
Since the closure of the Afghan airspace for non-defence aircraft on August 16, AI Boeing 777s flying between India and North America took a longer route — leading to more flying time and fuel burn. They flew via south Pakistan below Afghanistan and, then, entered Iran-Turkey-beyond, instead of the shorter Pakistan-Afghanistan-Turkmenistan/Uzbekistan route earlier.
Since Thursday, AI B777s have started heading straight north, over the Hindu Kush range and, then, taking the usual route to the west. As a result, the flying time of AI 101 (Delhi-New York JFK) is now going to be less than 16 hours, instead of the over 16.5 hours on the longer route avoiding Afghanistan — leading to fuel saving of 7 tonnes one-way.
