Air India has made some changes to its international route map, with the latest data suggesting that it has removed services between Bengaluru and London Gatwick as well as Delhi and Ho Chi Minh City. The airline is in the middle of a significant overseas expansion and could include these dropped routes sometime in the future.
Bengaluru-London Gatwick
Simple Flying had earlier reported that Air India would start a non-stop service between Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (BLR) and London Gatwick (LGW). According to the airline’s previous schedule, flights between these two destinations were supposed to start on April 1, five times a week.
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However, Simple Flying analyzed the data provided by Cirium Aviation Analytics and found that no flights were scheduled by the carrier on this route. Air India connected BLR with London Heathrow until 2022 and was supposed to switch this with a Gatwick service in April.
Currently, Bengaluru is served by British Airways, which flies non-stop from the South Indian City to London Heathrow Airport (LHR). It will soon be joined by Virgin Atlantic, which will start flying this route from March 31, using one of its Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft.
Delhi-Ho Chi Minh City
Last year, several reports suggested that Air India was looking to add a bunch of new international destinations to its route network, including Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. With an expanding fleet, Air India now has the ability to increase its overseas presence, and Vietnam is in consideration.
Indeed, until recently, the carrier had listed daily flights between Delhi and Ho Chi Minh City, but recent data from Cirium reveals that this route has also been dropped from Air India’s schedule. This does not mean that the carrier has scrapped these plans permanently, and it’s possible that these routes could come back in the near future.
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The Delhi-Ho Chi Minh City route makes sense for Air India, as there has been a massive surge of Indians traveling to Vietnam in the last few years. Vietjet and Vietnam Airlines both fly between the two cities, and Air India could become the first Indian airline to fly this route, should it decide to include it again in its schedule.
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Previous removals
This isn’t the first time that Air India has added and removed routes from its schedule. Simple Flying was one of the first media outlets to notice that the carrier had listed Los Angeles, Seattle, and Dallas as some of the destinations this year, among others.
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However, Air India has now removed these three US airports from its route map. There have been repeated requests from passengers to start non-stop flights between India and several other US destinations. With Air India adding widebody planes to its fleet, these could also be brought back in the coming months.
Which of these routes would you like Air India to start first? Please let us know in the comment section.
