A few weeks ago, Air India silently added a frequency between Delhi and London Heathrow, making it the fourth frequency between the two cities. The new flight is up for sale starting Winter schedule which commences on October 26, 2025 this year. This propels Air India to top the capacity between India and London Heathrow, along with extending the lead in terms of seats on offer between India and United Kingdom, despite the withdrawal of service between Goa and London Gatwick.
The question in everyone’s mind obviously is how did the airline manage the slot? An update on Oct 09, 2025 by ACL shows that Air India has leased this slot from Middle Eastern Airlines for Winter Schedule.
Air India will offer 39% of all seats between India and the UK this winter, followed by British Airways at 28% and Virgin Atlantic at 25%. IndiGo, which recently launched flights to Manchester and has announced that it would fly to London Heathrow soon has 3% of the total seats on offer, which will go up as and when flights to Heathrow are opened for sale. Data for this article has been sourced from Cirium, an aviation analytics company and is exclusive for this article.
Air India flights to London Heathrow
The India – UK market is one of the most lucrative as well as competitive ones, especially to London Heathrow due to the paucity of slots at the airport. Traditionally these flights have garnered high yields and also been a source of good transit traffic as well as passengers in the front cabins.
With this addition, Air India will offer four daily flights to London Heathrow from Delhi, two daily flights to London Heathrow from Mumbai, a daily flight to London Heathrow from Bengaluru, a total of 49 weekly services to Heathrow alone, while it will also offer flights to London Gatwick from Ahmedabad and Amritsar, while continuing to curtail the operations from Goa. This makes Air India the largest operator between India and London Heathrow, taking the title away from British Airways and extending its lead on the India – UK sector despite the cut in capacity from Goa, Mopa.
India – UK Market
The below charts show how the India – UK market is shaping up with Air Canada operating flights to Mumbai from London Heathrow, but originates in Toronto and TUI operating limited flights to Goa.
Network Thoughts
At a time when the airline is shrinking significantly, strengthening London Heathrow by all possible means is a smart strategy. However, the airline had three flights a day from Delhi, two from Mumbai and one from Bengaluru. Why did the airline decide to operate the additional flight from Delhi over Mumbai, especially at a time when the Pakistani airspace closure is leading to increased flight times? The answer to this is multifold. An incremental service from primary hub has lower incremental costs as compared to a flight from the secondary hub. Competition is strong at both in the form of British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, which also focus on a lot of transit traffic to North America. More importantly, the product from Delhi is the A350 and ex-Vistara Dreamliners, while those from Mumbai are the B77Ws. There would have been a product mismatch on the sector, something which the airline has not been averse to in the past but may want to look at in the future. Having the Dreamliner in Delhi, helps with better swaps for operational and engineering reasons.
There could be more airlines between India and London (beyond Heathrow) over the next few months. Air India itself would be under pressure from a fleet stand point as the former Delta aircraft have started leaving the fleet, following the withdrawal of its legacy B777-200LRs. This wouldnt have come at a worst time as the -200LRs range is in need right now for the airline to operate without entering the Pakistani airspace. As and when the multi year delayed refurbishment of the B777s start, it may have to look at curtailing even more flights to North America and possibly consolidate all operations to Delhi. If it has to shrink for whatever reasons, strengthening a station like London Heathrow is always a great idea and it seems the airline is staking its claim on slots whenever possible.
Its transformation program Vihaan.AI has targeted a transformation by 2027, which now looks all but impossible as the upgrade for the B77Ws will not be complete by then by its own admission. The London Heathrow slots and flights are thus a glimmer of hope amidst the gloom.
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