Starting May 01, 2026; Air India will launch flights to Hanoi, Vietnam, its second destination in the country after Ho Chi Minh City. The flights will operate five times a week. Air India had launched flights to Ho Chi Minh City in June 2024, with five times a week service with exactly the same days of operations.
Over the last few years, Vietnam has been extremely popular for Indians and the airline’s entry to Hanoi helps offer trips which see entering Vietnam from Hanoi and exiting via Ho Chi Minh City or vice versa. Additionally, this also opens up connectivity via Delhi to multiple points in Europe for passengers who would have looked for such an itinerary but Air India could not offer the required options.
Air India will deploy its standard three class A320neo on the route offering Business Class, Premium Economy and Economy class service. The timings of the flights are as below.
AI2390 DEL0120 – 0720HAN
AI2391 HAN0820 – 1135DEL
Flights operate on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, Saturday and Sunday.
The timings do not mimic those to Ho Chi Minh city which is a mid-day departure from Delhi and helps connect the morning bank of arrivals from Europe. Instead the departure to Hanoi is post mid-night with a return in Delhi which times perfectly to connect to the departure bank. The outbound does not see connection from the second set of flights Air India has to Frankfurt or Paris too.
Decision on timings and days of week is decided by multiple factors like availability of slots at both the airports, transfer traffic potential. This is decided with the help of industry data, availability or unavailability of the competition on certain days of operation, operational days for other routes in the network, maintenance requirements being some of those.
The way the timings are structured, it looks like Air India aims to provide Europe – Delhi – Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi – Delhi – Europe as the potential travel option and being the most optimal in terms of connecting times for such an itinerary.
Network Thoughts
The Delhi – Hanoi route will see Air India as the fourth carrier with Vietnam Airlines operating four times a week, while VietJet operates thrice a week. IndiGo operates Daily, with timings which cater to the Origin – Destination traveller rather than a connecting network.
For Air India, this is a logical expansion in Vietnam, where Bilateral Air Services Rights will be in short supply and a strategy of diversification being better than the strategy it has used for Bali and Kuala Lumpur where it went up to 10x weekly flights at different timings and helped connectivity.
From the time the airline announced the flight to Hanoi, till the first flight happening on May 01, a lot has changed in the world. The middle eastern war has led to a spike in oil prices impacting the route economics, not just for the new route but for every route in the network. Air India has reduced frequency on many of its international flights in May already.
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