Corona: American Airlines defers Bengaluru-Seattle launch by a year to next winter

NEW DELHI: The coronavirus pandemic has prolonged south India’s wait for a direct flight to North America by a year. American Airlines (AA) has deferred the launch of its Seattle-Bengaluru direct to winter of 2021, from this October. This flight is the first announced nonstop between south India and the US.
“Like nearly every airline, American is having to make drastic changes to its flight schedule as customer demand has evaporated. Unfortunately, this impacts our plans to launch several new routes and existing summer seasonal services. As a result, we will delay the launch of new routes, including service from Philadelphia to Casablanca, Chicago to Krakow (KRK) and Seattle (SEA) to Bangalore (BLR) to 2021. SEA-BLR will commence during winter 2021,” AA said in a statement.
“The commercial viability of long-haul routes relies heavily on an extended period of advance bookings, often six months or more. As demand is virtually non-existent right now, we simply do not have the bookings to make these routes profitable at this time.