CHENNAI: Air India Express has announced an expanded domestic flight schedule effective from September 1, introducing several new routes across the country. However, the revised network has disappointed passengers in Tamil Nadu as the long-pending expectations for additional services from Chennai have not been met.
Under the new schedule, Air India Express will operate a daily Chennai-Madurai service, which will depart at 11:50 am and arrive in Madurai at 1:05 pm. And, the return service will leave at 2:05 pm and reach Chennai at 3:15 pm.
The airline has also introduced new services between Coimbatore and Mumbai, Tirupati and Hyderabad, Aurangabad and Delhi, Jamnagar and Mumbai, and Jodhpur with Mumbai and Delhi. Additional frequencies have also been announced on routes connecting Delhi with Bhubaneswar, Patna, Kochi and Varanasi.
However, passengers pointed out that the Chennai-Madurai flight was not entirely new, and instead, Air India would discontinue its long-running Chennai-Madurai service on August 31 and replace it with an Air India Express flight operating on the same schedule. Unlike the existing Air India service, which offers Business Class seating, the Air India Express aircraft will feature only Economy and Premium Economy cabins.
Passengers were expecting the airline to restore the discontinued Chennai-Coimbatore and Chennai-Tiruchirappalli services, which were withdrawn about two years and one-and-a-half years ago, respectively. There was also hope that Air India Express would launch flights from Chennai to the recently upgraded Tuticorin Airport.
With none of these routes included in the expansion, passengers have expressed disappointment, claiming that Air India and Air India Express continue to overlook Tamil Nadu, particularly Chennai, while expanding their domestic network.