Virgin Atlantic has announced a new second daily service to Delhi Indira Gandhi Airport, commencing on 29 March 2020, offering 108,000 additional seats for summer 2020. The new flights to Delhi will go on sale on Saturday, 23 November. It will depart Heathrow in the morning complementing the airline’s current evening departure and offering more choice to customers travelling for both business and leisure between India and UK’s capital cities. Together with Delta Air Lines, Virgin Atlantic will offer seamless connections between Delhi and New York JFK, Boston, Detroit and Atlanta via Heathrow. The airline will also be re-timing its Mumbai flight to an evening departure from Heathrow, offering a more convenient choice for business customers. With the additional daily flight to Delhi and the newly launched Mumbai service, Virgin Atlantic will offer more choice to India than ever before. Juha Jarvinen, EVP Commercial at Virgin Atlantic, said: “Next year will mark twenty years since Virgin Atlantic started flying to Delhi, and the service continues to grow in popularity for both business and leisure travel. The second daily service from Heathrow is an excellent opportunity to meet customer demand on this route and, coupled with our new service to Mumbai, we’re able to offer even more choice and unrivalled Virgin Atlantic service to customers travelling between the UK and India.’’ The airline has announced some further changes to its flying programme in 2020: For transatlantic customers, the airline will fly its brand new A350 to San Francisco from May 2020, and coupled with a new weekly flight, will boost capacity by 40,000 seats for the summer season.By August, Virgin Atlantic’s A350 aircraft will fly to five destinations across its network. …

Until now, every visa was processed on a B2C basis. Window Malaysia is working closely with Tourism Malaysia to promote Visit Malaysia 2020 (VM2020) and will launch Window Malaysia Affiliates program which will help Indian travel agents make the visa process seamless. Along with single entry visa, they have also launched Window Malaysia Privileges Membership programs for visitors to Malaysia as value addition to agents which is also commissionable. Below are benefits of the Window’s Malaysia Affiliates Program: Classic Membership INR 1000+ GST SIM Card worth INR 517.28Cover upto INR 925,00024/7 live chat and email support Discounts and offers Silver membership INR 4000+ GST SIM Card worth INR 517.28Cover upto INR 18,50,000 24/7 live chat and email support Discounts and offers and much more Travel Premier Service which includes arrival & departure lounge access and refreshments For more details, please contact, contactus@windowmalaysia.in

Adani Group is set to acquire 13.5 per cent stake in Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) from Bid Services Division (Mauritius) and 10 per cent stake from ACSA Global after the Competition Commission of India (CCI) approve the acquisition of shareholdings. The CCI has also approved an additional acquisition of 3.28% stake in logistics company Delhivery by the SVF Doorbell Cayman Ltd. This will take Adani Group’s share in MIAL to 23.5 per cent.

New Delhi metro station is now providing check-in facility to passengers of AirAsia India, SpiceJet and GoAir who are travelling through T3 terminal of the Delhi airport. Till date, the service was available for the flyers of Air India and Vistara. The flight check-in facility at the metro station would close two hours prior to the departure time. The airport-bound passengers will be able to do metro check-in for domestic and international flights from New Delhi Metro station two to 12 hours before the scheduled departure of their respective flights. 

Travel M!CE Show, this year, has been scheduled for December 14 & 15 at the Trident Chennai. The show is a platform to meet over 65 buyers from across the country. The show will entail pan-India corporate meetings on day 1 and interactions and meetings with M!CE specialists on Day 2. The event will also witness buyers from pan India mainly 2 & 3.

Jet Privilege has rebranded itself as ‘InterMiles’, six months after stakeholder Jet Airways aborted its operations. “InterMiles will encompass both loyalty and rewards programme (previously, JetPrivilege) and the ubiquitous rewards and recognition currency (previously, JPMiles)”, Jet Privilege said. Jet Airways owns 49.9% of Jet Privilege Private Ltd., while Gulf carrier Etihad Airways owns the rest.

Indian Railway Catering & Tourism Corporation has signed an MoU with Karnataka State Tourism Development Corporation (KSTDC) to market and operate the Golden Chariot Train. KSTDC will soon hand over the reins of the train to IRCTC. IRCTC is planning a revamp of the train itineraries also to add different flavours that Karnataka has to offer. The new itineraries shall be a mix of history, culture, wildlife and nature. It is proposed to include Bandipur, Mysore, Halebid, Chikmagalur, Hampi, Bijapur and Goa in the itinerary. IRCTC is expected to carry out internal refurbishment of the train and commence operations from March 2020. 

Star Air in a recent announcement has said it would start flights on the Bengaluru-Kalaburagi route thrice a week from November 22 with the beginning of operations of Karnataka’s Kalaburagi airport. The flight will depart from Bengaluru at 12.20 pm on Monday, Friday and Sunday to Kalaburagi district. Star Air currently has two 50-seater ERJ-145 aircraft in its fleet. 

The four-month-long runway re-surfacing work at Kochi Airport has begun and there would be no flights from 10 AM to 6 PM till March 28, 2020. Since almost all services have already been re-scheduled between 6 PM and 10 AM, the project period would see cancellation of only five services during the major runway re-surfacing period, a statement from the airport said. Domestic sector is going to have only four cancellations. In view of it, CIAL has decided to increase the check-in time to 3 hrs for the domestic passengers and 4 hrs for the international passengers, the statement said.

STIC Travel Group recently organised a ship orientation program for their travel partners in Mumbai. Seabourn Encore docked in Mumbai on 16 November which was on a 37 days voyage from Athens to Singapore. All agents who visited had a full ship tour. Their world wide sailings can be booked by all the agents in India.