Re-entering India’s sky after a gap of nearly 10 years, the Texas-based American Airlines is looking to connect more destinations, especially Mumbai to the US, via non-stop services. Last week, American Airlines launched a new non-stop flight between New York to New Delhi on a Boeing 777-300 aircraft.

In a conversation with IANS, Tom Lattig, Managing Director, EMEA, Sales at American Airlines said the airline has seen healthy demand from ‘visiting friends and relatives’ (VFR) in this sector. Besides, the airline expects to cater to more of student traffic from the new academic session. “We know there are a lot of Indian students in North America, who will travel back and forth. There is also a huge Indian population in the United States. So that is the biggest segment right now. “We are also seeing quite a bit of North America point of sale, leisure business. So we do see some leisure customers, and then the corporate business is still a bit slow to materialise, but we do expect corporate recovery will happen,” Lattig told IANS.

After Delhi, the airline plans to start a Bengaluru-Seattle service from March 2022. At present, the airline has a codeshare agreement with IndiGo. “We are going to work really closely with IndiGo to make sure that we have good connecting times and services for both Chennai and Hyderabad for our Bengaluru service and as the markets develop, we will evaluate, whether or not it makes sense to add more nonstop flights,” Lattig added.