Yesterday, IndiGo launched flights to Rewa in Madhya Pradesh, with daily services from Indore. The airline is operating the ATR 72-600 aircraft on this route. My mind went back over a decade ago when the airline launched flights to Chandigarh. It launched Chandigarh with thrice daily flights from Mumbai, with each extending to Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai giving a seamless one-stop same aircraft connection.

Air India is withdrawing its Bengaluru - San Francisco and Mumbai - San Francisco services starting March 2026. There has been a lot of speculation around why the Bengaluru - San Francisco and Mumbai - San Francisco routes are being discontinued by Air India. This is the longest route from Bengaluru and the only non-stop to Americas and thus people are up in arms on social media against the move by Air India.

Digi Yatra, the government initiative backed by airport operators has been in the dock for various reasons in the past. From the slow roll out to security, a lot of questions have been raised. However, it turns out that its usage has been increasing since inception, shows data released by the government in the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of parliament , in response to a question.

The last few days have been chaotic like never before for IndiGo. This is not the first time that the airline faced pilot shortage. It did in 2019, when it initially blamed the delays and cancellations on a storm impacting its network, later admitting that it has pilot shortage and that it would cut its schedule by 2% for the remainder of the scheduling season.

The ambitious Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) - UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Nagrik) is set to complete a decade of operationalisation soon. Today, the government released data in Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament which shows that 923 routes were awarded under RCS-UDAN until October 2025, of which only 651 were operationalised but 123 could not complete their exclusive three year term.

It has now been a week since the IndiGo crisis snowballed into unprecedented grounding for the entire network. The largest airline in the country with a 65% market share came on its knees as it was woefully short of pilots to fulfil its committed schedule which the regulator had approved. From Kingfisher to Jet Airways and SpiceJet, the crisis affected thousands because of the size of the airlines.

In February 2023, Vistara inducted its first of four A321LR into its fleet. The induction enabled the airline to start operations to Mauritius from Mumbai, followed by flights to Denpasar, Bali from Delhi in December 2023. Back then, I had termed it as the route of the year and it indeed turned out to be a blockbuster route for the airline.

Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) has overtaken Mumbai’s Chattrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) in Domestic Air Traffic Movements (ATMs) in October 2025, shows data by Airports Authority of India. This is not the first time that it has happened, with March this year also seeing a similar trend, but the footfall numbers between the two airports are now closer than what they were in March.

The busiest air route in India connecting the capital with financial capital will see an unprecedented 60 flights each way this December, as Air India adds another flight between the two cities. Coupled with flights to Hindon from Mumbai and to Navi Mumbai from Delhi, the connectivity between the two cities is even higher. Here are the top 10 routes in India and which airline commands the respective markets…

Last September, Air India sent one of its aircraft (VT-EXN) to Hosur for a refit. This would involve reconfiguration of the aircraft to the new standard three class layout and repainting to the new Air India livery, which was modified with the smudge on the tail being taken away. The refit included new seats, new carpets, curtains and upholstery. The aircraft was expected to re-enter service in December 2024, joining the eight three-class Air India A320neo aircraft that already feature the upgraded cabin interiors and configuration.

Over the last few years Indian aviation has undergone a sea change, with acquisition of Air India by the Tata group, merger of four airlines into two, widebody order placement and wet-leasing widebody aircraft by IndiGo, and a general focus on international operations by almost all carriers. Indian carriers have traditionally missed the international opportunity with over half the market being carried by foreign carriers.

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.