Indian Airlines Air India and Indigo are preparing for higher fuel costs and longer travel times when they redirect international flights after Pakistan closed their airspace in the midst of tensions on a mortal militant attack in the busy assholine.
India claimed that there were Pakistani elements in the attack on Tuesday in which armed men killed 26 men in a meadow in the occupied pahalgam area. Pakistan has denied any participation and demanded proof of any evidence.
The archirrival with nuclear weapons have unleashed a series of measures in response, and India puts the critical Water Treaty of the Indo del Río serving the water in suspense.
International airlines are not affected by the ban.
But on Thursday afternoon, Air India and Indigo began redirecting flights to New York, Azerbaijan and Dubai, all of which generally use Pakistan airspace, according to data from the Flightadar24 monitoring website24.
The worst hit airport will be New Delhi, one of the busiest in the world, from where flights cross Pakistani airspace to fly to destinations in the west and the Middle East.
Cirium Asce data showed that Indigo, Air India and its Air India Express Budget Unit have approximately 1,200 combined New Delhi flights scheduled for Europe, Middle East and North America in April.
Air India’s flights to the Middle East from New Delhi will take approximately one more hour, which means more fuel and less load, an Indian aviation executive said he refused to be identified.
The fuel and the oil of the airplanes generally represent approximately 30 percent of the operating costs of an airline, with much, the largest component.
Canceled or tight flights, pilot lists to change
Indigo said that about 50 international routes can adjust slightly. He also said he was canceling flight flights from April 27 to at least May 7 and Tashkent from April 28 to May 7.
Indian Airlines’ expansion plans have already been complicated by delays in the delivery of Boeing and Airbus.
An Indian airline pilot said Reuters The prohibition would force airlines to rebuild their calculations in the allowed flight hours and adjust the crew and pilot lists accordingly.
Another executive said that his airline staff worked until Thursday night on the consequences of the prohibition.
Both talked about anonymity.
Indigo 6E1803 flight from New Delhi to Baku on Thursday took five hours and 43 minutes through a longer route that meant going to the state of Gujarat from India and then on the Arabic sea, before swinging north over Iran towards Azerbaijan, showed Flightaare’s data. The same flight, through Pakistan airspace, took 5 hours 5 minutes on Wednesday.
In 2019, the government of India said that the closure of Pakistan’s airspace for about five months caused a loss of at least $ 64 million for Air India, Indigo and other airlines.
