Air India – the Tata owned carrier is launching flights to London Gatwick from Bengaluru starting August 18, 2024 (Subject to change). This will be the fifth destination to India from London Gatwick. Ahmedabad, Kochi, Goa and Amritsar are the other destinations which the airline connects to London Gatwick, while it operates to London Heathrow from Mumbai and Delhi. The flight timings would be as below,
AI177 BLR1305 – 1905LGW
AI178 LGW2035 – 1050(+1)BLR
Flights will operate on Monday, Wednesday, Thursdays,Friday and Sunday. Flights will be operated by 787 Dreamliner configured in two classes with 18 Business and 238 Economy class, a total of 256 seats.
The airline had started operations to London from Bengaluru in October 2018, with thrice a week service to London Heathrow and continued during the pandemic times before coming to a halt in 2022. The slots at London Heathrow were freed up by cancelling the London – Newark thrice a week service and using those slots to operate flights from Bengaluru.
The addition further strengthens Air India’s dominance in the India – UK market where it also operates 31 weekly flights to London Heathrow and six to Birmingham. Vistara – which is set to merge with Air India in the next nine months operates seven weekly flights to London Heathrow. British Airways and Virgin Atlantic have announced their expansion to Delhi and Mumbai respectively which becomes effective in phases on the back of addition of flight quota under the revised Bilateral Air Services Agreement.
Gatwick the gateway to expand
The addition of this flight will take the London Gatwick operations to 17x weekly for Air India. The lack of slots at Heathrow has meant that Air India has to look at other options in London, which has more airports like London Gatwick and London Stansted. Geographically, Heathrow is to the west of London and closer to the city. Gatwick is towards the south while Stansted is towards the North of the city.
If slots are hard to come by at London Heathrow, Air India may well explore opportunities to add more flights to Gatwick.
Capacity spike from Bengaluru
Virgin Atlantic started operations to Bengaluru – its third destination in India, this summer. The airline will operate a daily flight and deploy 1806 weekly seats. With Air India offering the services, the capacity has gone up nearly 3x on the route.
Air India will have to face the onslaught of both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic on this route in terms of the product with British Airways operating the A350-1000 and Virgin Atlantic operating the 787-9 Dreamliner, both new products. Air India’s 787s are in massive need of refurbishment and there are constant complaints on social media about them. The airline had announced that it would send aircraft for refurbishment starting June 2024 but multiple news reports have indicated a delay in this.
Network Thoughts
Air India’s Bengaluru – Gatwick schedule had appeared earlier with flights beginning May 01, until they were pulled out and never opened for sale. The announcement of this route, along with upgrading the Chennai – Colombo and Delhi – Colombo routes to dreamliner and addition of flights to Toronto is an indication that the airline is (finally) ready to deploy the A350s on international routes and free up some dreamliners.
If I have to take a measured guess, I would guess the routes to be those to Frankfurt and Paris – where there will be a step increase in capacity as well as product and easier route to start selling an additional class of service. The airline has a strong presence at both these places and the markets can perfectly absorb the addition of 50-70 seats each day.
The addition starts the tertiary hub development at Bengaluru with a long haul international with timings which support Origin – Destination traffic on the route and help get connections from Chennai, Hyderabad, Trivandrum. The well perfected model of sarkari Air India of having afternoon departure bank to Europe is being replicated for building other hubs.
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