Air India prepares for massive cancellations in June and beyond as war takes toll – Firstpost

Air India, the Tata-SIA joint venture, is further decreasing its international network starting June, with some cancellations continuing for the entire scheduling season, as reported by schedule tracking website
Aeroroutes.

The massive cancellations come amidst the ongoing oil shock and
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s appeal to not travel to foreign shores for a year to save up on foreign exchange. This also comes within days of airspace over West Asia being progressively available for operations though the Pakistani airspace closure continues to hurt with Air India having to take refueling stops for flights to North America.

What gets cancelled?

The airline is cancelling a mix of short haul and long haul international flights along with cutting frequencies across regions. The changes primarily impact the months of June to August, a traditionally weaker quarter. While the May travel would have had subsequent forward bookings when the war began, the impact of a longer war is felt in subsequent months.

Its network to Singapore will see reduction of services to India, with double daily flights from Chennai and Mumbai being cancelled, along with reduction from Delhi to four flights a week in July. There is also a reduction of services to Bangkok from Delhi (from four daily flights to three) and Mumbai (reduction in six frequencies a week). There is also a reduction in services to Kathmandu from six daily to four daily between June and August, halving flights to Kuala Lumpur from ten to five times a week, and suspending services to Male from Delhi. The recently started service to Shanghai also sees the cut. The airline is also cancelling services to Dhaka from Mumbai and reducing frequency to Colombo from Mumbai.

The European network sees further cuts in frequency with flights to Vienna, Copenhagen, Rome, and Zurich seeing frequency shift to thrice a week from current four times a week, while flights to Paris reduce from twice a day to a single departure a day. Flights to Milan also see a cut in frequency to four weekly flights from the current five.

The North American network also sees massive cuts with flights to Chicago suspended between June and October along with flights to Newark from Delhi and New York from Mumbai suspended between June and August. Service reductions to San Francisco, Toronto, and Vancouver continue into August with varied frequency changes. The flights to Australia which had seen frequency reduction to five from seven services a week, further reduced to four for the months of July and August.

Further changes remain possible on reinstatement of some of these flights or further cancellations, as these flights have had their inventory zeroed out at 8am this morning. Immediate verification from the airline or independence schedule provider organisations has not been possible.

Why international?

The Indian government has capped the aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price hikes for domestic operations of airlines to only a 25 per cent increase in April and kept the rates unchanged for May. However, the burden on international flights has increased manifold as crude oil prices crossed North of $100 per barrel and has remained there for most part since March.

The cancellations come a day after there were multiple social media posts claiming Air India is cancelling all international flights due to fuel shortages, which was vehemently and rightly denied by the airline. The ATF situation in the country has so far not warranted cancellations on either domestic or international routes, but the new cost reality and subsequent drop in demand definitely does warrant a relook especially for an airline which closed the previous year with losses exceeding Rs 20,000 crores.

Tail note

With a network as large as Air India with connections between Asean and India’s neighbourhood to Europe and beyond, the impact of reducing long haul flights comes naturally on the short haul international segments. The airline will likely rejig the deployment of equipment as some of the A350s and ex-Etihad 777s get freed up which will help a product improvement on other routes, giving it the ability to bench the legacy 777s.

All eyes would also be on rival IndiGo, which currently operates six damp leased Dreamliners and had for a short period ended reservations for its widebody European network before reopening it. The West Asia war is a major blip in the expansion plans of IndiGo and turnaround of Air India, with the latter shrinking to North America like never before and reversing nearly all the gains it had made post privatisation in the crucial market.