Delta Air Lines to move Mumbai-Atlanta flight to New York’s John F Kennedy International Airport

Delta Air Lines has announced that it is moving its non-stop flight from Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, to Mumbai in India back to John F Kennedy International Airport in New York with effect from October 24, 2009.

Delta Air Lines, based in Atlanta, Georgia, the United States, had launched the Atlanta-Mumbai route in 2008, with the first flight having taken off from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on November 1, 2008.

The website globalatlanta.com has reported that, three days before Delta Air Lines’ maiden flight between Atlanta and Mumbai, Ronan Sen, India’s Ambassador to the United States, had declared that India would open a consulate in Atlanta by the end of 2009.

However, just three weeks after the Atlanta-Mumbai flight started, Delta Air Lines, the world’s biggest airline, suspended the service temporarily owing to the terrorist attack in Mumbai.

Top executives of Delta Air Lines, the website globalatlanta.com reported, had said in a memo to the employees on June 11, 2009, that the global economic recession had prompted a restructuring of Delta’s global route map.

The website quoted Kent Landers, a spokesman of Delta Air Lines, as saying that the airline decided to cancel the Atlanta-Mumbai route since “the largest potential traffic base for flights to India originates in New York.”

Atlanta travellers, the spokesman of Delta Air Lines added, would still have one-stop access to Mumbai through John F Kennedy International Airport in New York and to Shanghai through Detroit and that “passengers only lose a few hours by taking those transfers.”

Delta Air Lines had started the Mumbai-New York service in 1991, when it bought Pan American World Airways.

Richard Anderson, Delta’s CEO, had said recently that the carrier would cut international capacity by another 5% in addition to the 10% cuts it had announced in 2008.

Delta Air Lines is reportedly planning to suspend non-stop flights to Shanghai in China and Seoul in South Korea from September 1, 2009.

The carrier recently upgraded its daily flight to Johannesburg in South Africa to a non-stop route.

Delta also has announced recently that it would be suspending service to Cape Town in South Africa by the end of August 2009.