Air India has been on an expansion spree ever since the airline’s ownership shifted from the government to the Tata Group.
The airline recently deployed its A350s to North America with daily service to New York. This along with flights to London Heathrow on the A350s, freed up B777s which have seen some upgrades and additional frequencies. There is now a twist to the tale.
Every time the airline gives a semblance of being on track; there is something or the other which seems to go wrong. This time is no different, with reports indicating flight cancellations by the airline during the peak winter period between India and North America.
Cancellations are not uncommon but this comes during a peak season. The India-North America traffic (and fares) typically peaks during December as scores of people of Indian origin and tourists visit India during the extended Christmas break. The Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) traffic peaks during this season.
What is being cancelled?
Schedule tracking website AeroRoutes listed out cancellations and frequency changes on Delhi-San Francisco, Delhi-Washington, Delhi-Toronto, Delhi-Chicago, Delhi-Newark. Data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article shows that the airline is cutting over 50 flights, which includes about 14 flights to Chicago, 16 to San Francisco, 8 to Toronto and over 20 to Washington.
The impact is not felt on flight to New York from Delhi, which is now operated by the A350s and flights from Mumbai (and Bengaluru) are not touched thus far. Air India is enjoying monopoly on most routes to the USA after United scaled down following the Russian invasion of Ukraine where in the Russian airspace is not being used by Western carriers. Air India overflies Russia, making it a shorter and the most optimum route to North America.
This comes at a time when the airline will see a sudden spurt in its flight count with the merger of Vistara into Air India.
What could be the likely reason?
A look at flight tracking website FlightRadar24 shows that four B777-300ER aircraft are on ground at the moment, with one being grounded from 2020. It remains unclear if the additional groundings will see the product revamp as well which has been delayed from the original declared dates. Two of these aircraft are at a maintenance facility in Turkey undergoing heavy maintenance.
This sets us up for the next question, if it could have been avoided. The answer could well be a yes. For an airline which aims to conquer the world, this is certainly bad optics. The airline recently went double daily to Toronto, Canada from Delhi. To announce expansion and then face a need to curtail the flights, is bad optics amongst many other things.
If the maintenance was planned, opening flights for sale is a grave mistake; but if it was unplanned then the airline has done a remarkable job of finding maintenance slots for its planes in an environment where these slots are hard to come by. Typically, maintenance of planes is a mix of cycles (take-off and landing being one cycle) and hours and airlines either have a maintenance spare or plan the maintenance in such a way that most or all planes are available during the peak period.
Stuck between a rock and a hard place, the airline possibly had two choices. One, maintain the planes and cancel or push the maintenance and risk last minute cancellations. Both affecting passengers, in one way or another.
Tail note
It remains unclear on how many passengers are impacted by this move of Air India. However, this would have had revenue implications. Air fares are reasonably high and pick up at the last minute. Having to accommodate passengers on other flights means that last minute seats are now in short supply and the airline is accommodating passengers who have already booked, possibly at lower fares.
Several are trying out the new Air India and this experience could be a dampener for passengers to continue trying Air India in its transformation phase. The airline will have to introspect what led to this situation and act accordingly.
It has already been slow with the rebranding, with all touch points not shifting to the new branding overnight, something which many large and iconic brands strive for.
Cancellations are fairly common, but Air India is setting out to be different and not the same like everybody else. Will it reach there and when remains unanswered, for now.
The writer is an aviation analyst.
