New Delhi, Oct 19 (IANS): National carrier Air India on Saturday announced to start daily, non-stop services between Bengaluru and London Heathrow from October 27.

The move will help connect London Heathrow to all three hubs of Air India in India. Bookings for the new flights are now open.

The new flights will replace Air India’s currently served Bengaluru-London Gatwick route and increase the frequency between Bengaluru and London from 5 times in a week to 7 times weekly.

According to an Air India statement, the non-stop service, to be operated using a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft with 18 flat beds in Business class and 238 spacious seats in Economy, will add capacity to London Heathrow by 3,584 seats a week, inbound and outbound.

Air India currently operates 31 times weekly to London Heathrow from Delhi and Mumbai.

Air India said it will continue to operate 12 times weekly flights to London Gatwick from four cities -- Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Goa and Kochi.

Earlier this month, Air India said that flights operated by Vistara will start using the flight code 'AI2' after the merger of the two airlines next month. Despite the integration on November 12, the Vistara experience will "remain the same", said the Tata Group-owned airline.

The merger involves Vistara, a joint venture between Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, and Air India.

Meanwhile, in the nine-month period this year (January-September), Tata Group-run Air India flew over 1.64 crore passengers with 13.9 per cent share, and Vistara registered a market share of 9.8 per cent with 1.15 crore air passengers.

AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India), which is also a part of the Tata Group, ferried 61.02 lakh passengers in the nine months this year, clocking a market share of 5.1 per cent, as per the DGCA data.