New Delhi: Air India will start its long-awaited direct flights to Frankfurt and Chicago in the next two months.

Announcing this, Civil Aviation Minister Shahnawaz Hussain said during a recent meeting, US envoy Robert Blackwill had assured him that he would pursue with Washington the resumption of flights to India by American carriers which had stopped operations in the aftermath of September 11 terror strikes.

Addressing a convention on aviation and tourism, he said the government, which is continuing with the 'open sky' policy since this April, would be finalising bilateral air traffic agreements with several countries in the next few months.

However, he pointed out that over two crore seats, under already signed bilaterals, remained unutilised compared with about 1.5 crore being used by foreign airlines. "While signing the bilaterals, we will definitely keep in mind the interests of our national carriers," Hussain said.

Referring to the problems being faced by Air India in getting convenient time slots at the Heathrow airport, he said Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had recently written to his British counterpart Tony Blair to provide suitable slots at the London airport.

Hinting at Virgin Airways' demand for more rights to fly to India, he said if any of the British carriers wanted to operate more flights here, "we should get suitable slots in UK".

PTI