Jet Airways, the Indian airline with the most frequent flights between Thailand and India, will deploy a wide-body Airbus on its Bangkok-Mumbai route to meet expected strong demand.
From Oct 30, the A330-200 jet will be deployed on one of the three daily flights on the route, which is also served by the Boeing 737-800 and 737-900 single-aisle series.
The Airbus, with 18 seats in business class and 236 in economy, will increase capacity on the popular route by 50%.
The airline's B737-800 and B737-900 are both configured with 12 business-class seats each while there are 156 seats in economy for the former and 172 in the latter.
Jet Airways director Gaurang Shetty said Thailand is becoming an increasingly popular tourist destination for Indian travellers with tourist arrivals surpassing 1 million.
Furthermore, connecting traffic over Bangkok to Australia and Asean destinations booked through codeshare and interline partners is also growing rapidly, offering a huge opportunity.
The increase in capacity comes at a time when travel between India and Thailand is growing at an exponential rate.
In 2015, the Indian market registered a 15% growth with more than 1.5 million Indian tourists visiting the country.
With over 180,000 flyers between Mumbai and Bangkok and more than 350,000 Indians travelling to Thailand between April and June this year, Jet Airways wants to establish itself as the airline of choice for this burgeoning sector with the additional capacity.
The A330 service will depart Mumbai as flight 9W 70 at 8am and arrive in Bangkok at 1.55pm. The return leg, flight 9W 69, will depart Bangkok at 3.25pm and arrive in Mumbai at 6.25pm.
Jet Airways said the schedule will allow passengers to connect conveniently and seamlessly to Australia and countries across Asean via codeshare and interline partner airlines.
The airline has not made changes to its Bangkok-Delhi route in the forthcoming high season with two daily flights served by B737-800 and B737-900 jets.