Air China plans to fly to CCU from next year. It would be either CCU-PEK or CCU-PVG.
Good to have one future *alliance airline at CCU with good connections to US/canada west coast. TG/SQ will loose china-bound business pax to CA since flying time will be much less. Lost opportunity for AI.
This is really good news - will definitely help Air China establish the market since they're there first. And I'm sure this will be a reasonably bad hit to SQ/TG etc., especially if Air CHina is able to time it to their US flights.
Ethiopian is a real eye-opener!! Truly Africa's great little airline.
There was a time when IA was looking to approach ET to wet lease aircraft, during the late 1990s --- when there were those crazy pilot strikes.
ET's safety record is great and has an equally superb maintenance and engineering division. The result of close relations with Pan Am, American, and later Lufthansa.
It has been a route pioneer too. The India-China route is one example.
It will soon be getting 777s and has also ordered 787s. A330 is temporary till the 777s start to arrive. Fleet too is modern --- 737s, ATRs, 757s, 767s.
Inflight too its a nice experience and this is perhaps what has got it the Airline of the YEAR 2006 award ---Africa.