Weirdest International Routes out of India

India recently has become a juggernaut in aviation. Not only the increasing presence of airlines like indigo, vistara etc, but also the influx of new airlines entering India despite the full fledged expansion by Emirates and Qatar airways. However, if we go back in time we will notice that there are several routes in and out of India that are not less than weird. Nowadays also due to an increase in traffic, there are many new routes opened from different countries.

Lets start off things with Air India, the flag carrier of India about which we have talked about in our last blog. In its long history Air India has operated several routes, new and old to various countries around the world

Once upon a time, Africa was home to millions of Indians, who were also an important part in that countries society. So seeing this high demand, Air India operated several destinations in Africa which were nevertheless weird. Along with usual destinations like Nairobi and Lagos, Air India operated flights to Harare, Lusaka, Accra, Entebbe etc. However due to political instability and lack of demand in some countries, these routes were cancelled. Air India only had scheduled services to Nairobi in Africa until the Pandemic.

Air India also operated to the city of Nadi in the pacific island of Fiji via Singapore, Perth and Sydney. This is certainly an offbeat and oddball route however, there was a high population of Indians in Fiji so just like African routes, this route was to cater to the countries diaspora. Most of these routes were in the 60s in the 707, when Air India was a well-reputed airline and was expanding.

Air India 707 VT-DXT "Trishul" at Amsterdam Airport

Pic via Peter Riool via JetPhotos

In the 50s, when Air India still had the constellation aircraft to fly to London, they operated through weird stops like Dusseldorf and Berne. However, it was likely that they had no transport rights from the respective destinations. Other weird routes includes the widely popular Amritsar-Birmingham, Tashkent, Ras Al Khaimah and Al-Ain.

More modern routes include Copenhagen and Madrid.

Jet airways once was a noted and well reputed carrier before it ceased operations in 2018. It operated several flights out of Belgium's capital, Brussels to North America an India. It is an odd choice considering Brussels does not have the amount of traffic like London and even Amsterdam, where they later changed their scissor hub to. They also operated flights to Ho Chi Minh city in Vietnam via Bangkok.

Jet Airways 777-300ER VT-JEH on approach to Brussels Airport

Jet Airways operated flights to Chennai, Delhi, Mumbai, New York JFK , Newark

EWR and Toronto were operated from Brussels

Pic by dutch via JetPhotos

The largest carrier in India by market share, Indigo operates to destinations like Istanbul, Hanoi and Chengdu. These flights are mostly aimed at holiday goers in India. Indigo along with other LCCs in India operate flights to the Gulf and south east Asia from destinations like Calicut, Jaipur, Madurai, Varanasi etc.

Not only India-based airlines, there are some foreign airlines also who operated weird routes to India. Czechoslovakia airlines also operated their il-62s to Mumbai from Prague, these countries did not have much demand when the route operated. However Mumbai was a stopover between Prague and Bangkok like many other airlines which used India as a stop between Europe and Far East/South East Asia/Oceania. LOT Polish Airlines operated and still operates flights between Warsaw and Delhi. Delhi also saw many flights from Central Asia and Eastern Europe due to good political ties between India and USSR and other eastern bloc countries. Destinations include Tashkent, Dushanbe, Baku, Ashgabat, Kiev, Almaty etc.

CSA Czech Airlines OK-JBI at Mumbai (then Bombay)

airport during the heyday of eastern bloc airlines in India

Pic by Jimmy Wadia via JetPhotos

Royal Brunei airways once operated flights from Kolkata (then Calcutta) to Bandar Seri Begawan in Brunei via Singapore. The flight was later continued to Dubai.They also operated flights to Cairo from Kolkata. Similarly, SAS had flights from Copenhagen to Kolkata as a stop-over. Lufthansa, Klm and Alitalia also operated flights to Kolkata as a stop to Australia and Far East. China Eastern these days operates Kunming to Kolkata flights.

Royal Brunei operated 757s to Kolkata and had a noteworthy

presence there. Pic of V8-RBA is via Flickr

Recently due to India's status in the world stage, many airlines now fly do India with weird destinations. The Eastern African carrier RwandAir has flights between Kigali and Mumbai.Iraqi Airways has flights between Najaf and Baghdad to Ahmedabad. Uganda airways has proposed flights between Entebbe and Mumbai, and the weirdest of all, American Airlines has proposed flights between Seattle and Bangalore. This is a route that actually makes sense due to Bangalore being a IT hub and due to this has high demand to the west coast of the United States. Northwest proposed flights to Bangalore to Amsterdam and Kingfisher proposed Bangalore to San Francisco non-stop however both did not come in Action. Delta once flew Chennai to Paris on the 767-300ER.

Certainly, Planes have connected us to the most unexpected places on earth!