IndiGo inducted its first 787-9 dreamliner from Norse Atlantic in March this year, to operate to Bangkok from Delhi. By June, when it announced new destinations like London, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Manchester, Athens amongst others, a lot had changed. The ghastly terrorist attack on civilians in April and subsequent Operation Sindoor meant that Pakistani airspace was no longer available and when the flights to Amsterdam and Manchester were open for sale, the point of origin was Mumbai and not Delhi, as was widely expected. IndiGo quickly ramped up its presence in Mumbai, rejigging its international bank of flights to ensure better connectivity and add to International to International transit passengers.
With a slot leased from Virgin Atlantic, IndiGo will fly to London Heathrow starting October 26, 2025 on a daily basis which will keep one aircraft occupied. The airline now has three 787-9 on damp lease, with one more expected in the first half of November, followed by two more between January and March as per original announcements. Even before the airline launched operations on Delhi – Manchester route, the airline has added frequencies on the route and the airline is operating six times a week to Amsterdam until early December.
I tried optimising the schedule manually in excel, something which I had done for the A350s of Air India and well loved by the readers becoming the most read post back then. Here is how it looks. The summary is below this image, which you can open in a separate tab to understand better
- Mumbai – London Heathrow – Mumbai, Daily
- Mumbai – Amsterdam – Mumbai, 6x weekly
- Delhi – Manchester – Delhi, 5x weekly
- Mumbai – Manchester – Mumbai, 4x weekly
- Mumbai – Copenhagen – Mumbai, 3x weekly
Four aircraft will operate five routes and have a weekly frequency of 25 weekly frequencies, against the maximum possible frequencies of 28 on European routes from India.
These aircraft may be on ACMI (Aircraft, Crew, Maintenance and Insurance) basis, but the scheduling should enable maintenance, swapping of planes for schedule recovery as two primary objectives. Every aircraft requires time-off for maintenance and airlines manage it by swapping tails. With four planes, there are three maintenance slots which are planned as below,
- There is a Mumbai – Copenhagen service on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays, while the return is on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The aircraft stays in Copenhagen from Tuesday until Wednesday, giving one maintenance slot in Copenhagen.
- From wee hours of Thursday until wee hours of Friday, an aircraft has free time in Mumbai, which can be used for maintenance and in addition to this a swap with other two aircraft either one going to Amsterdam, or the one to Heathrow which does not have a slack time since frequency to Heathrow is Daily
- The Mumbai – Amsterdam frequency sees the onward flight on all days except Monday, while the return is on all days except Sunday. The aircraft does stays in Amsterdam from Sunday until Monday, giving a little over 24 hours for maintenance or recovery.
The flights to Manchester see the operations as DEL – MAN – DEL – MAN – BOM – MAN – DEL – MAN – BOM – MAN – DEL – MAN – DEL – MAN – DEL across seven days of the week. This aircraft covers two of four BOM – MAN – BOM flights, while the rest two alternate with BOM-CPH.
What happens next?
With Manchester being serviced from both Delhi and Mumbai, the airline would be actively looking at providing a similar bank of connections from Delhi. IndiGo made a lot of changes to its South East Asia network from Mumbai, which were daily flights but the flights to Amsterdam and Manchester were only thrice a week, reducing the ability to offer connections by half or lower as compared to a daily flight.
A lot remains unanswered at the moment, including the slots availability at Amsterdam. The reduction of flights could be an indicator of either the loss of slots or the possibility of flights from Delhi, which could well be subject to the availability of Pakistani airspace.
Network Thoughts
More often than not, the planning aspect of Network Planning involves the route analysis, route profiling, and route finalising. The nitty gritties are worked out by the scheduling team which is an art in itself and requires a lot of skill to balance all the requirements in one go.
With the very first season, nature of operations, weather challenges, slot challenges, the team would be at the receiving end from so many challenges. Over the next two seasons, the airline will stabilise the operations and with six planes, clarity on airspace and the performance indicators with it, the schedule it put forwards in March 2026 when the season transitions from winter to summer will see the six airplanes in full operation, which will give a glimpse of what the future holds when the A350s land in 2027.
Since you have come this long in the article, the bonus point is to inform the readers that the third Turkish Airlines B777 has been in India since the last few days. IndiGo had three B777s from Turkish Airways, though it used only two for two flights to Istanbul (maximum permissible under Bilateral Air Services Agreements). However, in one of the investor presentations it had made a mention of the third aircraft as spare. The government, after revoking the permission to fly Turkish flag planes, reversed its decision which has allowed IndiGo to continue flying the planes with the Turkish flag. The flights to Istanbul are much shorter and have a longer ground time in Istanbul, which enables Turkish Airlines to manage maintenance there, in case you were wondering about it.
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