London: The long-awaited bi-weekly Air India direct flights from London to Ahmedabad will commence from March 28, the airline announced.

"Boeing 747-400s will be pressed into service for the direct flights, departing from on Friday and Sunday nights," V Thulasidas, Chairman and Managing Director of Air India, said at a launching function last night (Mar 6, 2004).

Complimenting the national carrier for the new service, India's High Commissioner to UK, Ronen Sen, said that Ahmedabad would become third Indian city apart from Delhi and Mumbai to have direct Air India flights from London.

"This will provide not only benefits to the sizeable Gujarati community in this country, which is a vibrant community, it is also deeply linked with India in terms of cultural and kinship and contribute in strengthening the bonds between India and the UK."

He said India has already been identified by 'Lonely Planet', a well-known travel magazine, as one of the preferred destinations. Not only there has been a 13 per cent increase in the tourist traffic to India from UK, the number of people travelling on business visas had gone up by 31 per cent.

Keith Vaz, former Minister for Foreign and Commonwealth; Lord Swraj Paul, NRI (Non residential Indian) industrialist and British Ambassador for Overseas Business; G P Hinduja, NRI Industrialist and president of Hinduja Group, Lord Navneet Dholakia, president, Liberal Democrats, Joginder Sangar, leading NRI hotelier and Sir G K Noon, leading NRI businessman were among those present on the occasion.