www.uninews.com

Northwest Airlines launches new airbus for Mumbai-Amsterdam flights

Mumbai, Oct 3 (UNI)

Northwest Airlines today introduced a state-of-the-art Airbus A330-200 aircraft on its daily services between Amsterdam and Mumbai, offering enhanced comfort with improved seating and in-flight on-demand entertainment systems for all passengers.

A Northwest Airlines statement here today said the new aircraft represents a significant upgrade over the DC-10 equipment, which was being earlier used on this route. With the new aircraft, the flight numbers for this route would change from the current NW42/41 to NW34/33. However, its timing would remain unchanged. The Mumbai-Amsterdam services are operated by Northwest Airlines in co-operation with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines.

Northwest’s A330s are equipped with the airline’s world business class lie-flat seats, new seats in coach class and an in-flight entertainment system.

The fully interactive in-flight entertainment system offers a wide variety of music, movies, short subject programmes, games, shopping and in-flight information, all ‘‘on demand’’, giving customers the freedom and flexibility to start, pause or stop at any time. The gateway to all these features is a convenient retractable controller, making it easy to access from any sitting position, as opposed to stationary controllers fixed on armrests.

The statement said in the World Business Class, Northwest customers could view any of these features on a 10.4 inch/26.4 centimeter video screen, 50 per cent larger in size than the screens found in business class seats on other US airlines. The Northwest customers travelling in coach class are able to view any of these features on a personal video screen in the back of seat in front of them.

Both world business class and coach class have state-of-the-art seating arrangements. The A330 provides Northwest with up to 30 per cent in fuel savings, lower maintenance costs and is much quieter aircraft than the DC10 aircraft it replaces.

The airline began taking delivery of the new Airbus A330 aircraft in August 2003 and at present it has 20 aircraft in Trans-Atlantic, Trans-Pacific and Intra-Asia service. The airline has an additional 12 on order scheduled for delivery by the end of 2007.