Alitalia will re-start daily flights from Rome to New Delhi in October after a nine-year break, Italy's loss-making flagship carrier said on Tuesday.
The flights will resume on 29 October and run until 24 March, Alitalia said.
"The decision to launch this new service was taken to meet the increasing demand for flights between the two countries," Alitalia stated.
After Great Britain, the second largest number of European visitors to India come from Italy, Alitalia added.
More than 426,000 people visited India from Italy in 2015, according to the most recent data available from the central statistics agency, Istat.
New Delhi is Alitalia’s second new intercontinental destination of 2017, following Male, Maldives (from 31 October), and the extension of direct flights to Los Angeles, USA three times a week for the upcoming winter season.
The Rome-Los Angeles flights only operated between April and October in recent years.
Investment in more long-haul routes is part of a turnaround strategy announced in March for Alitalia, which went into administration and was put up for sale in May.
Alitalia has received expressions of interest from 33 potential buyers, one of the company's three special commissioners, air transport expert Stefano Paleari, announced on Tuesday without elaborating.
"We received the envelopes from the notary this morning and have started opening them," Paleari told journalists.
