- Air India is expanding aggressively in SAARC and ASEAN countries, adding flights to Kathmandu, Colombo, and Bangkok from July 07, 2025.
- These additions strengthen Air India’s Delhi hub by enabling two-way connectivity to Europe and North America and offering competitive fares for connecting passengers.
- With IndiGo’s presence minimal or non-existent on these routes, Air India is doing an IndiGo to IndiGo in international skies.
Air India, under the Tata group, is spreading its wings and taking on IndiGo, the market leader and largest carrier in India by fleet. While IndiGo remains the undisputed leader on the domestic routes, the neighbourhood is seeing a change and even as IndiGo focuses on international routes, Air India is taking a considerable lead when it comes to adding flights to countries in SAARC and ASEAN.
Air India, which recently announced flights to Manila, is adding flights to Kathmandu, Nepal, Bangkok, Thailand, and Colombo, Sri Lanka. These new additions are effective July 07, 2025. This will further increase Air India’s connectivity index, allowing it to offer seamless connections to North America and Europe from these countries.
Nepal
The airline will add a sixth daily flight to Kathmandu, the capital of Nepal, from New Delhi, its hub and Indian capital. This takes Air India’s total offerings to 42 weekly flights from Delhi. Its low-cost subsidiary, Air India Express, recently added daily flights to Kathmandu from Bengaluru.
In a rare occurrence, Air India will now have double the flights of what IndiGo operates to Kathmandu from New Delhi and have nearly half of all frequencies between India and Nepal with SpiceJet and Nepal Airlines being the other carriers operating between India and Nepal.
Sri Lanka
Air India is doubling its flights to Colombo from Delhi, increasing to double daily operations instead of the current daily service. The airline will compete with Sri Lankan Airlines, which already operates double daily flights from Colombo to Delhi. The flights are being introduced to ensure two-way connectivity to London, Paris, and Frankfurt, thereby strengthening Air India’s hub in Delhi. IndiGo does not operate on this route but has a significant presence in Sri Lanka, including being the only carrier operating between Jaffna and two cities in India—Chennai and Trichy.
Thailand
As Air India moves to add more flights to its spokes from New Delhi, it is adding a third flight to Bangkok from Mumbai, which takes the weekly frequency to 18 weekly flights. The airline operates four flights a day to Bangkok from Delhi. On this route as well, it does one-up against IndiGo to Bangkok as well, where IndiGo operates only once a day between Delhi and Bangkok and also Mumbai and Bangkok. The airline is adding its second frequency to Bangkok from Mumbai from July 01, when it starts flights to Amsterdam and Manchester from Mumbai, which is thrice a week operation.
Why so many flights?
Air India has a major intercontinental operation from New Delhi, a hub which it created even before the Tata’s took over and has been growing on its hub presence steadily. Adding flights to its spokes not only caters to the growing demand but also opens up opportunities to connect passengers. Passengers from Europe to Bangkok, Kathmandu or Colombo fly via Middle Eastern carriers and European carriers with one-stop options. Having multiple flights enables Air India to offer a competitive fare and help with additional connecting passengers, a step in its path towards being a preferred network carrier.
Over the last two years, Air India has added new destinations like Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City, and Phuket from Delhi and added frequencies to Singapore, Bangkok and Kathmandu from Delhi to strengthen its Delhi hub.
Air India’s differentiator
Air India has not been very aggressive in the past, but the availability of aircraft and these announcements indicate that it wants to be dominant in the market. In all three markets where Air India is adding capacity, Indigo’s presence is non-existent or minimal, and this is the kind of capacity onslaught that IndiGo has not faced in the past.
All these additional flights will be operated by Air India’s three-class configured aircraft, which include a mix of former Vistara planes and refurbished and reconfigured Air India planes. With the added frequency, Air India will operate 42x weekly flights to Kathmandu, 28x weekly flights to Colombo, and 46x weekly flights to Bangkok.
Additionally, Air India has the advantage of being part of a global alliance and partnerships, which range from giving frequent flier benefits to reciprocal lounge access and fares sold by airlines across the world that are codeshare or interline partners. How much of this can translate into profitable business needs to be seen, but Air India is doing an IndiGo to IndiGo in international skies.
