<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Buster CT1K:
How about JFK-DEL or IAD-DEL? Those would not need to overfly the pole or the Himalayas. Instead, they would fly the established west-of-himalayas corridor heavily used by Southeast Asia-to-Europe flights, then keep going northwest across Russia instead of turning west to Europe, overfly northern Scandinavia and pass north of Iceland and across southern Greenland.
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Good question, no idea. That's why I mentioned ORD as making sense given it's central location for feeder flights from east and west. But, ex East coast should work also.
Maybe non-stop is unprofitable and requires filling up the plane in Europe with feeders from NA as well as Europe on the Europe-India leg. Make it non-stop, and you lose the Europe feeders. Seems to me this isn't enough to be a deal breaker.