Air India Express set to increase flight frequency to Abu Dhabi to daily
Mangaluru: Air India Express (IX) is all set to increase the frequency of its flights from Mangaluru International Airport to Abu Dhabi to a daily flight from July 22, 2024. At present, IX operates 4 flights a week to the capital city of the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday. This will also result in an uptick in daily flights to Bengaluru to 8, with IX and IndiGo restarting flights and IX routing aircraft for enhanced Abu Dhabi operations.
At present, IndiGo (4) and IX (1) operate a total of 5 flights daily on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector. From July 8, the daily flights in this sector will go up to 6, with IX restarting its second daily flight. This number will further increase to 7 from July 22 on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. IX will operate this additional flight onward to Abu Dhabi from Mangaluru. The Bengaluru-Mangaluru leg will operate purely as a domestic flight and Abu Dhabi passengers will board at Mangaluru.
From August 1, flights on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru sector will go up to 8 on three days a week – Monday, Wednesday, and Friday respectively. IX will operate the third flight on these days to go with its two daily flights. IndiGo will operate 5 daily flights including the fifth flight which it announced in the summer schedule starting March 31. For operations in this sector that sees high passenger footfalls, IX uses the Boeing-737 Max and IndiGo uses the Airbus series aircraft.
On the Mumbai-Mangaluru sector, IX will operate the afternoon flight from July 16 in place of Air India, which will continue to operate the morning flight.
Currently, airlines from Mangaluru International Airport, operate 5 daily flights to Mumbai and Bengaluru, 2 daily flights to Chennai and Hyderabad respectively, one daily flight to Delhi, 3 weekly flights to Pune, and 1 weekly flight to Tiruchirappalli. International flights operation includes 2 daily flights to Dubai by IX and 4 weekly flights by IndiGo, 4 weekly to Dammam, 3 weekly to Muscat, 2 weekly to Doha and Bahrain, and 1 weekly each to Kuwait and Jeddah – all by IX.