Air India has announced the addition of 174 weekly flights on domestic and short-haul international routes, operated by the A320 family as part of Northern Winter Schedule which begins October 26, 2025. The most notable additions are flights to Kuala Lumpur and Bali which will operate 10x weekly from current daily. Additional flights to Kuala Lumpur are effective November 15, 2025 and help reduce the night halt in Kuala Lumpur on some days of the week.

Kozhikode continues to have the largest international presence of Air India Express Air India Express is back in news and this time for withdrawing flights from points in Kerala. This created an uproar to an extent that Trivandrum MP Shashi Tharoor met senior Air India officials to protest and discuss. As we get closer to the start of Winter schedule 2025, which begins on October 26, 2025, this is a good time to look at what exactly changed for the international network of Air India Express.

SpiceJet has been making multiple announcements over the last few weeks. The airline intends to add up to 20 aircraft as wet/damp leases this winter, which will effectively double up its operations. The fund infusion of INR 3000 crore last financial year was supposed to help the airline speed up the ungrounding and expand fleet, but clearly that has not happened.

IndiGo inducted its first 787-9 dreamliner from Norse Atlantic in March this year, to operate to Bangkok from Delhi. By June, when it announced new destinations like London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Manchester, Athens amongst others, a lot had changed. The ghastly terrorist attack on civilians in April and subsequent Operation Sindoor meant that Pakistani airspace was no longer available and when the flights to…

One of the first things that you see when you visit any airline website is the Booking Engine where you can search for flights, select dates of travel and in some cases class of service along with count of passengers before starting the booking process. The booking engine is completely missing when one visits the website of Riyadh Air, which announced the launch of flights to London Heathrow.

In the early 2000s a very close friend of mine moved out of India for higher education. A resident of Chembur, his parents told him that the next time he visits post his graduation, he will land at Navi Mumbai airport. Luckily he visited once before graduation, but landed at the existing Mumbai airport and its old Terminal 2. This time around, he told his parents to come to the graduation ceremony and hopefully fly out of Navi Mumbai airport.

On Friday evening (Oct 03), IndiGo announced the launch of multiple flights from Delhi which included a four times a week service to Krabi, a second frequency to Bangkok, a Delhi - Bali service with a tech stop in Bhubaneshwar and direct flights to Manchester, seeing the return of the Norse Atlantic Wet/Damp lease 787-9 dreamliner back to Delhi, from where it operated to…

On August 4, 2025, IndiGo—India’s largest airline by market share—officially announced that it will commence daily direct flights from India to London Heathrow Airport (LHR). These services will be operated with leased Boeing 787‑9 Dreamliner aircraft, marking the airline’s entry into long-haul connectivity to the UK capital. ACL, the slot co-ordination company responsible for slot management for Heathrow, announced that IndiGo has leased 14 slots (7 pairs) at Heathrow from Virgin Atlantic for flights from Mumbai.

Over the last few days, IndiGo announced additional flights to Denpasar, Bali, where it already operates from Bengaluru, its longest flight thus far on its own metal. With the lack of range, its flights from Mumbai to Bali, will take a tech stop at Chennai, while those from Delhi to Bali will have a tech stop at Bhubaneshwar. This hurry possibly lies in cornering the additional seats under the revised Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA), details of which were removed from the public domain citing various reasons.

Delhi Airport will operationalise its revamped Terminal 2 starting October 26, 2025 coinciding with the start of Northern Winter 2025 schedule. The revamped terminal is expected to make the Terminal look modern and have amenities like self baggage drop amongst others. T2 is the oldest of the three terminals at Delhi Airport currently and was shut for a long period after the operationalisation of T3, until the revamp of T1 led to scale down of capacity at T1 and subsequent restart of T2 to cater to that traffic.

A few weeks ago, Air India silently added a frequency between Delhi and London Heathrow, making it the fourth frequency between the two cities. The new flight is up for sale starting Winter schedule which commences on October 26, 2025 this year. This propels Air India to top the capacity between India and London Heathrow, along with extending the lead in terms of seats on offer between India and United Kingdom, despite the withdrawal of service between Goa and London Gatwick.

India’s largest carrier IndiGo has announced flights to Siem Reap in Cambodia from Kolkata. This will be the second connection between India and Cambodia, with Air Cambodia operating to New Delhi from Cambodia’s Phnom Penh. Flights begin November 13, 2025 and operate three times a week, with IndiGo deploying its mainstay the Airbus A320neo on the route.  6E1655 CCU0150 - 0620SAI…

Joramco, the Amman-based aircraft maintenance, repair, and overhaul (MRO) facility and engineering arm of Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE), has signed a maintenance agreement with India’s leading global carrier and Star Alliance member Air India for the first time. Announced at the recent MRO Asia-Pacific in Singapore, this agreement gives Joramco the opportunity to perform heavy maintenance checks on Air India’s fleet of Boeing B787s and B777s.

Air India Express has been on an expansion spree. However, as part of its expansion it is seeing multiple hits and misses, a phenomenon which is very common for such rapid expansion. The airline which launched some routes with much fanfare has not been able to sustain them for long. The airline is now making changes to its Bangkok operations starting next month.

IndiGo hosted the IATA AGM in Delhi this June and coinciding with the event made some big bang announcements, one of which was regarding its expansion. The airline has announced that it would fly to Athens, Copenhagen, London, Siem Reap and four points in Central Asia. The airline recently announced that it will fly to London Heathrow and the final paperwork is underway.

First came the announcement from Aegean Airlines, then came the announcement from IndiGo and then came the joint announcement. The India - Greece route is set to get interesting starting 2026 with Aegean Airlines starting services to Delhi and Mumbai from Athens, while IndiGo launches flights to Athens. IndiGo intends to offer thrice a week service each from Delhi and Mumbai, but could well change its plans depending on the airspace availability.

In July this year, India and Kuwait revised their bilateral air services agreement which increased the seats between the two countries by 50%. The weekly quota of seats between the two countries went up from 12,000 seats each side to 18,000 seats. The revision had come after 18 years. The market is largely a Origin - Destination (O-D) driven market with Kuwait Airways not in the league of other middle eastern carriers…

Tata and SIA owned Air India will start winter only flights to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. The airline will operate Daily two class A320 family aircraft at below timings AI487 DEL0720 - 0850JSAAI488 JSA0925 - 1055DELAI489 DEL1250 - 1420JSAAI490 JSA1455 - 1625DEL Jaisalmer is a military airfield, a frontline air force base of the Indian Air Force with a civil enclave managed by the Airports Authority of India.

Gaya Airport made it to the news for its airport code during the Monsoon session of the parliament for its airport code GAY. The airport is all set to host Air India from September 01, 2025. Air India has announced direct flights to Gaya, strengthening air connectivity to one of India’s most significant religious and cultural destinations. The move comes at a time when spiritual tourism is emerging as one of the fastest-growing segments in Indian aviation, with the government and airlines alike recognizing its potential.

As the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) declared the Indian aviation domestic summary for July, it showed a drop in traffic month over month. July 2025 saw the domestic aviation industry cater to 1.26 crore passengers, nearly 3% lower than 1.29 crore passengers which the industry carried in July 2024. This has happened for the first time since January 2022, when January 2022 saw a lower growth than January 2021.

With only two listed airlines in India and the major airlines’ count falling over the years, it has become very difficult to understand the finances, and how the industry is doing. To study the Indian aviation industry is then tasked upon the data released by the regulator from time to time and comprehend various angles that come out. As IndiGo’s management talked about the growth it had in Q1 of this financial year, it was time to look at how the industry performed, who was below average and who was above.

In early February 2020, while the world was still debating about the flu, which was spreading in China and leading world organisations were not sure if it can transit from one person to another, Indian carriers operated their last non-stop flight to China. What followed was the world coming to a stop and the only flights which then operated between China and India were the government owned Air India operated to Wuhan, the epicentre of the pandemic to rescue Indians and bring them back to Delhi.

Hyderabad airport has been on a roll in the last few years even as its larger cousin Bengaluru kept getting all the attention. Hyderabad became the fourth airport in India to cross the 25 million threshold last year. Both airports have expanded rapidly, attracting more airlines, adding more destinations and expanding their infrastructure. While Bengaluru built a new terminal, Hyderabad expanded…

Mumbai headquartered Akasa Air which recently completed three years of flying will expand to Southeast Asia starting next month with flights to Phuket, Thailand from Mumbai. Flights begin September 20, 2025 and operate Daily at below timings QP618 BOM0740 - 1435HKT QP619 HKT1535 - 1915BOM This will be the 29th destination for Akasa Air and sixth international destination, with all others being in the middle east (Doha (Qatar), Kuwait City (Kuwait), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), and Riyadh (Saudi Arabia)).