Effective March 29th, Gulf Air is withdrawing its flights from Bahrain to Bangalore and to Hyderabad. No explanation has been provided by the airline, but I suspect that they have been crowded out by the far more aggressive Emirates Airlines.

Gulf Air flies a small Airbus A320 to Bangalore daily and a slightly larger A321 to Hyderabad four times a week, while Emirates flies three Boeing 777s/A330s daily to both cities.

Having overtaken European and ASEAN carriers, this is the first case of a fellow middle east airline feeling the pressure of the relentless expansion by Emirates across the Indian skies.

On the same date, March 29th Jet Airways will launch its Mumbai Kuwait service which complements their existing Kochi (Cochin) Kuwait service.

Mumbai-Kuwait: 9W 572 Dep 1900 hrs. Arr 2030 hrs.
Kuwait-Mumbai: 9W 571 Dep 2130 hrs. Arr 0400 hrs.

Obviously there is more traffic between Kochi and Kuwait, since even the Mumbai Kuwait service will offer convenient connections to the Mumbai Kochi services of Jet.

SpiceJet has announced the re-launch of its services to Kochi, from New Delhi and Mumbai, from December 15.

The starting fare will be Rs.1,350 (Kochi-Delhi/Delhi-Kochi) and Rs.750 (Kochi-Mumbai/Mumbai-Kochi). The seats are available for immediate booking. The SpiceJet call center numbers are 1800 180 3333/987 180 3333.

Flight SG 101 will start from New Delhi at 6 a.m. and reach Kochi at 10.55 a.m. (via Mumbai). In the return direction, flight SG 112 will start from Kochi at 11.30 a.m. and reach New Delhi at 3.55 p.m.

The direct flight from Mumbai will start from Mumbai at 9.05 a.m. and reach Kochi at 10.55 a.m.

In the return direction, the flight will start at 11.30 a.m. and reach Mumbai at 1.20 p.m., the release said.