In July this year, India and Kuwait revised their bilateral air services agreement which increased the seats between the two countries by 50%. The weekly quota of seats between the two countries went up from 12,000 seats each side to 18,000 seats. The revision had come after 18 years. The market is largely a Origin – Destination (O-D) driven market with Kuwait Airways not in the league of other middle eastern carriers in terms of transfer traffic and Jazeera being a very small player in the story.
Data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this post, shows that Kuwaiti carriers will start utilising seats under the new bilateral this winter. In July, when the bilateral revision made news, Kuwait Airways and Jazeera airways operated 11,502 weekly seats to India. In August, the utilisation was 11,946 weekly seats which is still within the older limits. In September, the Kuwaiti carriers are expected to deploy 13,158 seats per week, while in October when the season shifts the airline will deploy 13,453 seats to India per week. It further increases in November, the first full month of Winter schedule with 14,388 seats a week. This continues in December and there on.
Kuwait Airlines or Jazeera, who is increasing flights?
Both state owned Kuwait Airlines and Jazeera are increasing flights to India. Jazeera, which was operating 3306 seats a week to India from July to September, saw a jump to 3828 seats in October, but a steep reduction to 2958 thereafter, which is possibly the airline waiting to update its schedule. On the other hand, Kuwait Airlines has steadily increased its presence from 8196 weekly seats in July, 8640 weekly seats in August, 9852 weekly seats in September and 11,430 in November and beyond.
Which cities are getting additional seats?
A comparison between November 2025 and July 2025 shows that four cities are getting additional seats. Led by Mumbai, where Kuwait Airways will offer 1563 additional seats per week, Delhi where the airline will offer 765 weekly seats over and above the current ones, Kochi – 574 more seats per week and Bengaluru – 134 seats per week.
Interestingly, there have also been reductions in seats to Ahmedabad, Trivandrum, Bangalore and Hyderabad by the means of frequency reductions.
How is it being done?
Kuwait Airways has been operating double daily flights to Mumbai from Kuwait, with 11 of those 14 weekly frequencies operated by the A320neo, 1 by A330neo and two by the B77W. With the revision, the airline will be offering seven flights a week on the B77W and seven on the A330-800neo, increasing the seats on offer to 3983 seats per week, an increase of 64%.
Network Thoughts
The Indian government has been very restrictive towards increase in seats under air services agreements over the last few years. Only a handful of exceptions have been made and in this case it seems the O-D traffic did the trick. For Kuwait Airways, it is opening up a market from where it can aim to get some feeder traffic for its expanding services to Europe and other parts of the world.
The Indian side is yet to start utilising the additional seats, presumably left waiting for the allocation from the ministry before starting the process of adding flights. Air India Express, IndiGo, Akasa Air and SpiceJet would be vying for the additional seats but remains unclear on how the government would allocate them.
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