Originally Posted by
hserus
Poor as in, AF/KL used to fly to a lot more Indian cities than they currently do (like my home city MAA - where I was plat on AF till they withdrew the direct flight on a 343). They withdrew all those flights and replaced them with interline deals (not even codeshares, the airline will sell you tickets with those segments on IT / 9W flight codes).
When I'm flying long haul to the states or Europe, the last thing I want to do is to fly domestic to DEL or BOM and connect from there, just adds several wasted hours to my travel time.
Skyteam airlines serve the fewest destinations since AF dropped services to MAA and KLM to HYD. Most people don't need to have more than one Indian city to a European hub with a nonstop. If the city one travels to/from is served, the number of different cities with a nonstop service to a European hub makes no difference to one. If non sop to Europe from multiple cities is important to you, LH id your best bet.