New Delhi:
Air India has announced a considerable but temporary five per cent reduction in its narrow-body flight operations across select domestic and short-haul international routes, citing the need to bolster operational stability.
Until 15 July, the airline is temporarily suspending services on three routes and reducing frequency on 19 routes.
The airline is suspending services between Bengaluru-Singapore, Pune-Singapore and Mumbai-Bagdogra – each route losing all seven weekly rotations.
Key domestic arteries like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Kolkata and Pune, and Mumbai’s links to Goa, Hyderabad and other metros have also seen scaled-back schedules with reduced frequency, thereby losing between five and twelve weekly flights in each sector.
This announcement comes after Air India had slashed 15 per cent of its long-haul wide-body operations across international routes following the June 12 AI 171 Dreamliner crash at Ahmedabad.
Besides regulatory pressure, the airline is grappling with Middle Eastern airspace closures and night-time curfews in European and East Asian sectors. These factors have already caused 83 wide-body flight cancellations in recent days.
According to the airline, the reductions are aimed at strengthening Air India’s network-wide operational stability and minimising last-minute inconvenience to passengers.
As the airline recalibrates its network and pursues “maximum caution”, Air India seeks to assure passengers that full schedules will resume as soon as inspections clear and airspace conditions stabilise.
