Indian Carrier to Launch Direct Mumbai-Manchester Flight

Jet Airways India Ltd. will offer direct flights from Mumbai to Manchester from November this year. The Manchester service aims to target the 500,000 people of Indian origin residing in the northern part of the United Kingdom, Jet Airways said in a statement on May 18.

Initially, the carrier will connect Mumbai and Manchester four times a week — on Monday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. The airline will use 254-seat Airbus SE A330-200s for this service.

“Jet Airways will launch its first non-stop service between Mumbai and Manchester, thus further strengthening its connect to the United Kingdom (UK). This new service is the first nonstop service connecting India, via its economic capital with Manchester,” Jet Airways said.

The airline currently serves London three times a day from Mumbai and once a day from Delhi. The launch of the new service will provide seamless connectivity to several domestic destinations to and from India, including cities like Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Bengaluru, and Kolkata, through the airline’s hub, Mumbai.

“The new service will bring Manchester into our global network, reinforcing our footprint as well as expanding the choice of connectivity to and from the United Kingdom for our guests with the four days per week, non-stop service,” Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube said in a statement.

The airline will have over 8,000 seats on offer every week, making it convenient for both business as well as leisure passengers travelling between India and the United Kingdom, Dube added.

If the Mumbai-Manchester route is successful, a service to Delhi could also be introduced, Jet Airways Chairman Naresh Goyal said. Also, operations to other cities, including Amritsar, can be a possibility, Bloomberg reported.

“Securing a direct service to one of India’s major cities is the product of a lot of hard work over a long period of time to forge closer ties between Manchester and this globally significant economy. We have worked, along with a range of partners, to create a compelling case for why our city – and the wider North – is a great place to visit, invest in and do business with,” Manchester Airport CEO Andrew Cowan said in a statement.

The new service between Mumbai and Manchester is expected to be of special significance for business travelers and also for a significant diaspora of people, including a growing Indian community residing in and around Manchester, the statement added.

With the introduction of this new flight, which is the carrier’s fifth non-stop service to and from the United Kingdom, Manchester will become the 21st international addition to the Jet Airways network.

On May 16, Iceland’s transatlantic airline Wow Air announced the launch of its services from Delhi to multiple destinations in North America and Europe via the country’s capital Reykjavik from December 2018.