Good news for Pune residents. Air India is all set to launch a direct flight between Pune and Mumbai. Set to start from March 26, the flight will take off six times a week. The Air India flight will leave Mumbai at 9:45 am and land in Pune at 10:45 am. The return flight will depart at 11:20 am and land in Mumbai at 12:20 pm. This is actually the first direct flight available right now between the two cosmopolitan cities. Earlier, Jet Airways used to operate a flight, but it ceased operations in 2019. “An Airbus A319 will travel on the airline’s resurrected 9W route during the trip”, said the Air India website. This is the smallest aircraft in the carrier’s fleet.
For people travelling between Mumbai and Pune, the route will provide another option other than trains, buses and private vehicles. Ticket bookings have already started for the Air India Mumbai- Pune flight. Users can visit the Air India website to know more about the ticket prices. The economy tickets are priced around Rs 2,353 and the business class tickets cost Rs 18,467 per seat.
The Mumbai–Pune route will be the shortest narrowbody route in the country, as per reports. The shortest route in winter on narrowbody was the Kozhikode–Kannur sector (95 kms), which was also operated by Air India. The airline has since now stopped flights on the route.
This is not the only flight announced by Air India in recent days. From Sunday, the airlines will also start eight new weekly flights: three each from Mumbai and Delhi to Bangkok and weekly flights from Delhi to Hong Kong and to Seoul (Incheon). With this, the carrier’s total flight count to East Asia will go up to 67.