Government-owned Air India [ Images ] is starting a direct flight from Melbourne [ Images ] to Delhi [ Images ] in November.

It will also book passengers from there for destinations in West Asia and Britain, via their hub in New Delhi.

"We will be the first airline to have a direct flight to Melbourne," said a senior AI official, who did not want to be identified.

AI used to operate flights to Melbourne, Sydney [ Images ] and Perth in Australia [ Images ] but these were not direct; they went via Singapore. These flights were later stopped.

AI recently said it would make the new Terminal 3 at  Delhi airport its hub and committed to the airport operator to bring in 10-13 million passengers annually, a third of the unit's annual handling capacity, in two years.

It also committed to go in for a three-fold increase in its deployment of flights in and out of Delhi, from 480 a day to 1,200, starting from the next summer schedule. Currently, AI operates a little over 800 flights a day across the network.