We’ve all heard and read about the delays in flight operations at Air India with respect to their US operations in the past few months. The airline could not catch a lucky break, and saw multiple cancellations or widespread delays over months. However, Air India has now admitted there is a problem.
Air India to reduce six weekly frequencies between India and the USA temporarily
A shortage of qualified crew has forced Air India to reduce their weekly flights to the United States. The airline operates flights to Chicago, New York JFK, Newark and San Francisco using their Boeing 777 aircraft. The airline has seen delays recently on their flight operations with the 777 on these routes, with the result that there has been long delays, and unintended irritation for customers of the airline. It was primarily due to a crew shortage, ranging from an inadequate number of pilots or delays in the US visas for flight attendants.
On the sidelines of the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2023, Air India’s CEO Campbell Wilson today indicated to reporters that Air India will reduce their flights to San Francisco and Newark for the next three months. The airline has now decided that it will drop three weekly flights each for the time being to these two destinations. Campbell Wilson also indicated that the airline will have 100 pilots for the 777s soon.
AI flies 17 weekly nonstop flights to San Francisco, 14 to New York JFK, 7 to Chicago, 6 to Newark and 3 to Washington DC from India. The airline intends to cut down on flights where they can accommodate passengers on alternate flights.
Bottomline
Air India will cut down flight operations to and from the US for the coming three months as it brings more crew online to operate these flights. In the meantime, three flights per week to Newark and three to San Francisco will be reduced for the coming three months. This should impact availability and pricing of non-stop flights to the US.
What do you make of Air India’s short term plans to manage their US schedules?
Liked our articles and our efforts? Please pay an amount you are comfortable with; an amount you believe is the fair price for the content you have consumed. Please enter an amount in the box below and click on the button to pay; you can use Netbanking, Debit/Credit Cards, UPI, QR codes, or any Wallet to pay. Every contribution helps cover the cost of the content generated for your benefit.
(Important: to receive confirmation and details of your transaction, please enter a valid email address in the pop-up form that will appear after you click the ‘Pay Now’ button. For international transactions, use Paypal to process the transaction.)
We are not putting our articles behind any paywall where you are asked to pay before you read an article. We are asking you to pay after you have read the article if you are satisfied with the quality and our efforts.
I think they should drop all unprofitable flights to the USA. If they make money then they should drop other flights and keep what they have to the USA.
This reflects very poorly on the new management! >1 year since the Tata takeover and they have proved to be equally pathetic. Tweets on the bad aircraft quality on US flights is a commonplace. In January 2023, so many of my US based colleagues had a harrowing experience with them, across flights and across days! It left me sad and ashamed as a passenger and Indian…!
I had noticed that there were large gaps in service between NYC-DEL in recent weeks and large gaps when the only nonstops were on AA or UA. This explains it.