The ridiculousness, or perhaps the pettiness, of the Pakistan Airspace closure, doesn’t cease to surprise us all. Flights from India and South East Asia, heading west, are all suffering from this ban because they have to take a longer flight path flying both ways as they can’t just overfly Pakistan anymore.
Owing to this move by Pakistan, a lot of flights have been affected. United and Air Canada have suspended some of their flights to Delhi, and a lot of Air India flights are making technical stops along the way. For instance, the Delhi – Chicago flight has been flying with a stop at Vienna for months now.
Now, given that the airspace ban has been extended, for now, Air India has no option to continue with a diversion. Earlier, the scheduled departure of the flight used to be 20:30 from Delhi, arriving at 12:30 at Chicago. The current schedule of the flight is as follows
AI127 DEL0110 – 1125ORD 77W D
AI126 ORD1625 – 1840(+1)DEL 77W D
Now Air India will move the technical stop to Stockholm come June 1, 2019, and will continue the stop till June 30, 2019. On the way back, there will be no stop.
The departure time of the flight has been moved up to 22:05 (10:05 pm) to bring the arrival to the morning at 07:25 am. The departure from Chicago will be at 12:00 hours to come back to Delhi at 14:15 hours the next morning.
Unfortunately, this is not a win-win situation for aviation, and don’t know what Pakistan is gaining with keeping their overflying rights stopped, given they are losing precious revenue at least. Here is hoping this issue will be discussed at the upcoming IATA AGM in Seoul this coming weekend.
What do you make of the current situation, especially with Air India being affected on the airspace ban?
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