National carrier Air India is set to provide seamless connectivity to East Africa from the financial capital Mumbai with a direct daily flight to the Kenyan capital city Nairobi from September.
At present, Air India has a codeshare partnership with Kenyan Airways, which operates a daily service between Mumbai and Nairobi.
Code sharing allows an airline to book its passengers on its partner carriers and provide seamless travel to destinations where it has no presence.
The services on the Mumbai-Nairobi route will be operated four times in a week, Minister for civil aviation (Independent charge) Hardeep Singh Puri announced in a tweet Monday.
"I am delighted to announce that on the occasion of World Tourism Day on Sept 27, @airindiain will begin a direct Mumbai-Nairobi flight (4 days a week) to improve air connectivity between India & Kenya," Puri tweeted.
According to an airline source, the new route will be serviced through the 256-seater Boeing 787-800 plane.
Besides Nairobi, Air India Air India will also start flying thrice weekly to Toronto from New Delhi from September 27 as part of its international route expansion plans.
In addition, the flag carrier is also reportedly mulling to launch flight services to Indonesian tourist hub Bali from the national capital as well as to Hong Kong from Mumbai during the winter schedule.
The winter schedule of the airlines in India starts from the last Saturday of October every year.