Air-India is ready to comply with the directions of the United States of having armed sky marshals on board its flights while entering American airspace, if required.

It is a general direction to all airlines that armed police will be mandatory to take protective action for any foreign airline entering American airspace, A-I's public relations director Jitender Bhargava said on Tuesday. The airline at present does not have sky marshals on board its flights, he said.

"We are initiating and working out the logistics and comply if any A-I flight is identified for deployment of sky marshals since it has been made clear that it will be on a flight-to-flight basis," he added.

At present the airline operates 20 flights a week to New York, Newark and Chicago via London and Frankfurt.

The new requirement was issued on Monday by the US Homeland Security Department under an emergency amendment to existing regulations and applies to all passenger and cargo flights in the wake of threats from Al Qaeda.

Meanwhile, A-I flights out of Delhi to Europe and Gulf would start flying over Pakistani airspace from the new year.

Bhargava said the airline would save nearly an hour for flights out of Delhi while those from Mumbai would stand to gain by about 10 minutes as there was a marginal detour.