Tag Archives: Director-Commercial

Air India has finally disclosed the final Scandinavian destination for its new flight from Delhi—Stockholm. Pankaj Srivastava, Director-Commercial, Air India, revealed, “As of now, it’s quite possible that we will be flying to Stockholm. Most probably, the operations for the same will start from August 15. However, there is little work left on the same, and hopefully we would be able to make an official statement for the same in the next one week.”

India’s national carrier Air India is looking to add new routes between India and North America. Speaking at the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2017 in Mumbai, Pankaj Srivastava, Director Commercial, Air India, revealed, “We want to expand in North America and are exploring new routes like Houston and Dallas. We currently cut down travel time between the two continents by at least 10 hours.” He added, “There will also be a tenth destination in Europe soon. We are thinking of Scandinavia, and looking at either Glasgow or Copenhagen as options. We are also looking at increasing our flights into Australia and intend to take it to five flights into Sydney and five into Melbourne.”  

Air India launched its first direct flight from Delhi-Madrid at a gala ceremony in Delhi, which was graced by P. Ashok Gajapathi Raju, Minister, Civil Aviation; Pankaj Srivastava, Director-Commercial, Air India; I Prabhakara Rao, Chief Executive Officer, Delhi International Airport; Ignacio Ducasse Gutierrez, Tourism Counselor, Embassy of Spain in India and Director, Tourism Office of Spain in India, Mumbai; and other dignitaries from the travel and tourism industry. Madrid is Air India’s ninth European destination and 42nd international destination. Srivastava addressed the gathering and said, “The nine-hour flight would be able to cut down the flying time to Madrid by 4-5 hours, and would offer further connections to South American countries like Argentina, Brazil, Columbia and Chile.” The thrice a week flight with a  B787 Dreamliner, offers a convenient departure at 1425hrs from Delhi and arrival at Madrid at 2020hrs. From Madrid the departure time is 2150hrs and arrival in Delhi at 1110hrs the next day.

Air India has agreed to accept travel agents’ corporate credit card for booking, revealed Sunil Kumar, President, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI). Speaking in New Delhi, at the UFTAA presentation for TAAI Northern Region members, he revealed that the team of TAAI had a meeting with Ashwani Lohani, CMD, Air India; Pankaj Srivastava, Director-Commercial, Air India, and other representative of the national carrier. “I am very impressed with the response from Ashwani Lohani, Pankaj Srivastava, and the entire team of Air India on allowing travel agents to use their corporate credit cards to do ticketing. We have been consistently talking to them on the airline having no objection if a customer uses his credit card, or the agent uses the customer’s credit card. However, the agent could not use his corporate credit card to make the booking. However, they listened to us, and we are highly obliged that may be within a week, the agent corporate credit card will be used by Air India as a form of payment.”