Air India launched 3x weekly flights on Mumbai – New York JFK on December 7, 2018. Pakistan closed its airspace on February 27, 2019. This move had a significant impact on all airlines which flew over it. Due to the prolonged closure of Pakistan airspace, Air India, amongst other airlines, has had to reroute its flights, especially to the USA and Europe.
Air India flights to Washington, Chicago and New York JFK now have a technical stop at Mumbai and Vienna. Air India has cut the baggage allowance for their Mumbai – Newark flight due to payload restrictions on account of a longer route. It wasn’t just Air India. United, which operates non-stop flights to Mumbai and New Delhi from Newark temporarily cancelled their Newark – New Delhi non-stop flights till July 3, 2019.
Air India 777
Some flights like AI105/106 on the Mumbai – New York JFK route were cancelled temporarily from March 10, 2019. AI105/6 on the Mumbai – New York JFK route was supposed to restart from June 2, 2019.
But it looks like that won’t happen. Air India has closed reservations for 3x weekly nonstop AI 105/6 on Mumbai – New York JFK route till the end of winter 2019/20 schedule also. Air India has not clarified the reason is for Air India pulling out of Mumbai – New York JFK route.
Air India closes reservations for Mumbai to New York JFK
Delta recently announced the launch of a daily non-stop flights on the Mumbai – New York JFK route with a Boeing 777-200LR. Tickets are already on sale, and the first flight is scheduled for December 22, 2019. Is it a coincidence that Air India decided to kill this route in the wake of this announcement?
Air India does have the aspiration of mounting additional flights on Delhi – New York route in the winter season. Is this the reason why they pulled out of Mumbai – New York JFK? They could have done both as Air India does have 2 777-300ER grounded since August 2018.
Did you travel on AI 105/106 on the Mumbai – New York JFK route?
If we’re just naming routes, I’m all for a AMD to US or Canada. Would need a strong partnership with either Air Canada or United to flow people, but a strong number of population willing to travel.
Better would be to upgrade AMD-LHR to Daily and/or upgauge to 777. This would be the ideal one stop connection to AMD and offer a solid mix of local and flow connections (just looking at the capacity of UA and AC into LHR). This is less likely though, because of the A++ JV across the atlantic.
I don’t think you can say “for good”
It’s unclear. If you see the related airlineroute.net Twitter post from a few days back, there is an additional note that more changes are highly possible.
Perhaps the route has been suspended for now. Perhaps indefinitely.
BTW one cannot be confident about linking this to the Delta route launch. Different customer base entirely, and so many other Air India-specific issues.
@Girish, we have also indicated that it is a coincidence that this comes after Delta came into the picture. As for the term “for Good”, since we don’t know if the route will come back, the indefinite nature of this suspension beckons the use of the phrase.
Now the Twitter feed for airlineroute.net is showing tentative resumption on 03 July 2019
https://twitter.com/Airlineroute/status/1129110166878638081
This is why I suggested that the expression “for good” was perhaps not correct. Unless LFAL’s interpretation of the meaning of this expression is just different than mine.
Also note from the same feed that KLM is showing increase AMS-BOM to 5 weekly beginning 26 Sept 2019. Plus some aircraft variances/changes on both BOM and DEL routes.
I think the Maharaja decided to cut this route for the very reason you mentioned i.e the entry of Delta into Mumbai-JFK and with United already there on MUMBAI-JFK it would have made no sense to operate a 777 on a route where two similar size birds are flying and it would probably mean a semi filled plane or even close to empty aircraft which is clear loss.
However I do feel that it would be great for Air India to start direct BLR-JFK or CHENNAI-JFK which could mean a big hit among south indian flyers who till now have to transit via Del or Mumbai.
also an maa-jfk or blr-jfk route would gather more Sri lankan pax too who would reach US direct with a short stop on Chennai Blr than goin to lhr.