Air India, India’s national air carrier on independence day became the first Indian Airline to operate commercial flights over the North Pole.
As per the report, the Delhi-San Francisco flight of Air India, which generally flies over the Atlantic or the Pacific ocean, flew over zero degree north pole on India’s Independence Day.
Ashwani Lohani, Air India CMD flagged off the first commercial flight AI 173 with about 243 passengers on board.at 4 am on August 15 (India’s Independence Day) from Delhi to San Francisco via the North Pole.The plane is currently on its way to San Francisco. However, in an earlier instance, Air India’s Boeing 777 in 2007 travelled over the polar region.
Since there were no restrictions imposed for Indian flights over Pakistani airspace, it flew over Pakistan, then Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Russia and overflew the North Pole by 12.27am to cross over to the other side of the Planet Earth.
In the midst of the ongoing tension with Pakistan, Air India’s operations department had already planned two flight paths for the polar route debut.
With this new flight route, the distance between New Delhi and San Francisco has come down from 12,000 km to 8,000 km. The flight duration has also reduced by around one-and-a-half hours. Apart from this,fuel savings would be in the range of 2,000 to 7,000 kilograms per flight. This new route will also help in reducing carbon emission – in the range of 6,000 to 21,000 kilograms, per flight.
The first commercial service would be operated by Captain Rajneesh Sharma and Captain Digvijay Singh, marking the “maturing of civil aviation in India as another frontier is crossed”, said Mukesh Bhatia,Air India Western Region Director, a few days before the flight was to take off for the US.
