Participants met with civil aviation officials in Delhi, along with international aerospace companies there and in Hyderabad, including Tata Lockheed Martin Aerostructures, which supplies empennages for the C-130 cargo planes built at the Lockheed plant in Marietta
Atlanta airport officials recently participated in four-day trade mission to India. India has long lacked a nonstop flight link to the world’s busiest airport despite heavy advocacy from a more-than-100,000-strong diaspora community, reported globalatlanta.com.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport General Manager Balram Bheodari, Deputy General Manager and Chief Commercial Officer J’Aimeka Farrell and International Affairs Director Alrene Barr joined 15 organizations visiting the cities of Delhi and Hyderabad on the four-day India Aerospace Mission led by the U.S. International Trade Administration.
Participants met with civil aviation officials in Delhi, along with international aerospace companies there and in Hyderabad, including Tata Lockheed Martin Aerostructures, which supplies empennages for the C-130 cargo planes built at the Lockheed plant in Marietta.
Lufthansa, the German carrier, has long served multiple destinations in India from Atlanta via one stop in Frankfurt, while Delta partners KLM and Air France serve the country through Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris Charles de Gaulle, respectively
ATL officials visited GMR Group, an infrastructure company with maintenance, repair and overhaul unit called GMR Aero Technic. According to a LinkedIn post from Ferrell, they also “met with executive leaders for several India-based airlines and contributed healthy dialogue to opportunities for mutual growth in India and the US”.
The Atlanta airport has held talks with Air India on previous trips but so far has not announced the return of nonstop flights to India, which would be among the longest in the world.
Delta Air Lines Inc. once briefly served India via a short-lived nonstop flight to Mumbai halted in 2009. When it decided to relaunch the direct link in 2019, the Atlanta-based carrier picked New York for the nonstop route.
However, travelers from Atlanta have a variety of one-stop options to reach India through Europe and the Middle East, particularly since the arrival of Turkish Airlines and Qatar Airways in 2016. Lufthansa, the German carrier, has long served multiple destinations in India from Atlanta via one stop in Frankfurt, while Delta partners KLM and Air France serve the country through Amsterdam Schiphol and Paris Charles de Gaulle, respectively.
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