The tussle between India and Germany related to the air bubble agreement has finally come to rest. Civil Aviation Minister of India, Hardeep Singh Puri said via a tweet that flights between Germany and India are going to resume under the air bubble agreement. The number of flights that the German carrier, Lufthansa was operating earlier has been trimmed down. In addition to this, the number of flights Air India was operating earlier has been increased. More on the story ahead.
Air India to Fly from Delhi and Bangalore to Frankfurt
Lufthansa which earlier operated 20 weekly flights between India and Germany will now only operate 10 of them. As for Air India, which operated 3-4 weekly flights in the India-Germany route will now operate 7 of such flights.
Air India will operate 5 weekly flights from Delhi to Frankfurt and back and 2 weekly flights from Bangalore to Frankfurt and back. As for Lufthansa, it will operate 4 weekly flights from Delhi, 3 weekly flights from Mumbai, and 3 weekly flights from Bangalore to Germany and back.
“Flights between India & Germany recommence under air bubble arrangement. Lufthansa will operate from Delhi (4 days), Mumbai (3 days) & Bengaluru (3 days). @airindiain will operate 5 weekly flights from Delhi & 2 every week from Bengaluru to Frankfurt.” - Hardeep Sing Puri
Earlier, the flight service between India and Germany came to a stop because of the disagreements between both the countries. Air India had to cancel 12 of its flights to Frankfurt until October 14 because the German authorities withdrew the permission for the airline to fly to the country.
All the flights were further suspended until October 20, 2020. But on October 16, 2020, Air India announced that it is going to resume its flights to Germany from October 26. The airline further said that this flight schedule would continue till March 28, 2021.
Hardeep Sing Puri has made it clear that the Indian government won’t allow any international airline to come in the way of an Indian airline. Even though there still exists a parity in the number of flights both the airlines are operating, it is nowhere close to the parity that existed earlier.
