Airlines may continue to crib about slots at London Heathrow and how hard they are to come by, but capacity between UK and India in general and London Heathrow and India in particular has grown in double digits over the last one year.
February 2026 will see 160 weekly departures between India and London Heathrow, which is 21 more than last year, an addition of three services a day on an average. The growth is driven by IndiGo which will have 12 departures to Heathrow when it had none last year, along with Air India which has seven additional frequencies with the Delhi – London Heathrow sector seeing four daily services from three in the past.
Virgin Atlantic adds frequency to London Heathrow from Bengaluru
Virgin Atlantic has added four additional flights per week to Bengaluru, taking its total weekly departures to 11 from the garden city. Virgin Atlantic offers double daily services from Delhi and Mumbai to London Heathrow.
IndiGo to start flights from Delhi
IndiGo, which launched flights to London Heathrow last year from Mumbai will augment its London Heathrow presence with five times a flights from Delhi. The airline leased slots from Virgin Atlantic for its flights from Mumbai. However, the split timings across days for its Delhi operations make me believe that these slots have come from the airport and not leased by the airline. This also means that the airline may not have historicity for the slots and could see rejig towards the end of March when the season shifts to Northern Summer 2026.
British Airways next
British Airways will add a new daily flight to its schedule between Delhi and London Heathrow from 20 April 2025. This will increase the airline’s schedule across India to 63 flights a week across five cities. British Airways currently operates 56 flights a week – three a day from Mumbai, double daily from Delhi, a daily service from Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad
Air India remains the leader
Air India has 33% share by seats and capacity between India and UK. Air India operates to London Heathrow, London Gatwick and Birmingham. It has reduced capacity to London Gatwick over the last few months following the AI 171 crash.
Air India and British Airways are neck to neck in frequency to London, while Air India has more seats on offer between the two markets.
When it comes to London Heathrow, British Airways has higher frequency but lower seats due to the relatively premium configuration.
Network Thoughts
London Heathrow remains one of the top most airports in the world in terms of connectivity and United Kingdom continues to have a charm for Indians with traffic growing year over year. Often considered the most congested airport, Heathrow always has some of the other way to find slots for carriers via lease, purchase or airport quota. While non-stop services increase, the middle eastern carriers continue to add flights to various London region airports which include Gatwick and Stansted; while the European carriers have added services to London City Airport.
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