After observing a safety pause for almost a month, Air India announced a partial restoration of schedules on several routes. While only a few of the curtailed routes have been completely restored, most of them will be reinstated in a phased manner from October.
Following the tragic crash of Air India’s AI-171 in Ahmedabad on June 12 that killed 260 people, the airline faced severe shortage of aircraft due to the mandatory safety check of its wide-body fleet ordered by the director general of civil aviation (DGCA), voluntary inspection of its narrow-body fleet and the airspace restrictions in the Middle-East. On June 18, it announced reducing its international services on widebody aircraft by 15% and later also suspended six international routes and reduced frequencies on 32 international and domestic routes till July 15.
As Air India nears the announced timeframe of July 30 for curtailment, it announced partial restoration of its services on multiple sectors on Tuesday. The partial resumption will see restoration of some frequencies from August 1, with full restoration planned from October 1. The airline announced replacement of Ahmedabad-London Gatwick service, which was operated five times a week, with a new Ahmedabad-London Heathrow route, which will operate three times a week from August 1 to September 30.
Air India completely reinstated or increased frequencies on two routes to Europe. This included Delhi to London Heathrow route reinstated with two weekly flights which were previously curtailed with all 24 flights in the week to operate from July 16. The flights on the Delhi-Zurich route will also be increased from four flights a week to five flights a week from August 1. In Far-East, the daily flights from Delhi to Tokyo (Haneda) will be operated from August 1 and Delhi-Seoul (Incheon) will be operated with five flights a week from September 1.
However, multiple routes to Europe including Bengaluru-London Heathrow, Amritsar-Birmingham, Delhi-Birmingham, Delhi-Paris, Delhi-Milan, Delhi-Copenhagen, Delhi-Vienna and Delhi-Amsterdam will continue with reductions and changed frequencies until September 30. The routes with continued restrictions to North-America include Delhi-Washington (Dulles), Delhi-Chicago, Delhi-San Francisco, Delhi-Toronto, Delhi-Vancouver, Delhi-New York (JFK), Mumbai-New York (JFK), Delhi-New York (Newark Liberty), Delhi-Melbourne and Delhi-Sydney. The services on Delhi-Nairobi route have been reinstated but will be again suspended for September.
Four international routes including Amritsar-London Gatwick, Goa (Mopa)-London Gatwick, Bengaluru-Singapore and Pune-Singapore will continue to face temporary suspension of routes until September 30. Air India said that the restoration to full operation is being phased as some services initially planned to operate between August 1 and September 30 will be removed from the schedule.
With the partial restoration Air India is now operating more than 525 international flights per week on 63 short, long and ultra long-haul routes. “That Pause enabled Air India to perform additional precautionary checks on its Boeing 787 aircraft as well as accommodating longer flying times arising from airspace closures over Pakistan and the Middle East. Air India is proactively contacting affected passengers to offer re-booking on alternative flights or a full refund, as per their preference. Air India apologises for the inconvenience,” said the airline in a statement.
