Delta shutting down Mumbai route?

Ever since American Airlines withdrew their Delhi-Chicago non-stop back in the day, I’ve wondered which American airline will be the next to go away from India. United has non-stop services to Mumbai and Delhi, while Delta has a one-stop service between NewYork JFK/Mumbai via Amsterdam operating for a very long time.

While this announcement was out on AirlineRoutes.net for a while, I somehow seemed to have missed it.

DELTA has closed reservation for Amsterdam – Mumbai service, for travel on/after 28MAR15. The Skyteam member currently operates this route once a day, and planned to be operated by 767-300ER from 29MAR15.

Clearly, the JFK-AMS flight continues, but AMS-BOM is no longer available for sale beyond the winter schedule. I tried playing around on the Delta website, and it would present me options on Air France instead.

Having travelled on that segment between Mumbai – Amsterdam, I can tell you the Delta product was not the best out there but I used to compare it with the Mumbai – Brussels service of Jet Airways. We still don’t have any clue on Jet Airways moving their Brussels outpost to Amsterdam, given the investment they’ve made at Brussels Airport.

Is it possible that this means one less non-stop service to Europe from India?

Anybody know of any reasons why they discontinued this, especially since they already had their JV partner Virgin Atlantic already withdraw from Mumbai?

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About Ajay

Ajay Awtaney is the Founder and Editor of Live From A Lounge (LFAL), a pioneering digital platform renowned for publishing news and views about aviation, hotels, passenger experience, loyalty programs, travel trends and frequent travel tips for the Global Indian. He is considered the Indian authority on business travel, luxury travel, frequent flyer miles, loyalty credit cards and travel for Indians around the globe. Ajay is a frequent contributor and commentator on the media as well, including ET Now, BBC, CNBC TV18, NDTV, Conde Nast Traveller and many other outlets.

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Comments

  1. With Jet starting one more direct flight to Paris in addition to Brussels, its only helping Indian and Middle East carriers like Etihad and Emirates to consolidate its position flying into Amsterdam from India with just one stop over. KLM/Air France had the edge with the direct flight but Delta failed to capitalize the customers flying into US via Amsterdam. Its a pity that the US airlines are struggling to maintain their exisiting routes while Indian/Middle East airlines are adding to the routes……maybe a sign of what future is going to be like!!

    • United’s flights will continue – almost always full in both classes every night ex-BOM (and I think DEL as well)…

  2. One of the agents at Delta Diamond desk mentioned that KLM will be flying AMS – BOM route and KLM is working on the logistics.

  3. AMS-BOM has been Delta for a long time.

    Before that, it was the NW flight.

    I think that KLM was flying to BOM a very long time ago…

  4. I took the AMS-BOM flight on KLM in economy. KLM was pretty good with a free 23 hour stopover in AMS, one of my favorite cities in the world. Sad to hear that they are cancelling the route.

  5. I thought it was still a EWR-AMS flight that continued on to BOM – but I guess DL consolidated at JFK then.

    Was thinking of using DL instead of *A carriers, but I guess that this move nixes it! (Also note that VS was threatening to stop LHR-BOM-LHR – but I still see it operating tonight)

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