IndiGo will launch non-stop flights between Mumbai and Hanoi from October 26, 2026, the start of the Winter schedule, adding a third Indian gateway to the Vietnamese capital. 6E1637 will depart Mumbai at 0415hrs to reach Hanoi at 1000hrs, with the return 6E1638 leaving Hanoi at 1905hrs to land back in Mumbai at 2305hrs. Both flights on the sector will offer IndiGo Stretch, the airline’s business-class product, and rotates the aircraft with Delhi operations, with the Mumbai aircraft operating as Mumbai – Hanoi – Delhi, while another aircraft operates Delhi – Hanoi – Mumbai. The focus on the Mumbai – Hanoi timings is towards the Origin – Destination market, similar to Delhi, while Kolkata continues to focus on some connections from the domestic side. IndiGo has consistently tinkered with the timings from Kolkata since the launch.
The timing is notable for another reason: Akasa Air is launching its own Mumbai-Hanoi service this month, on September 4, 2026, well ahead of IndiGo’s winter start on the same city pair. Bck of the envelope calculation, in absence of official data in public domain shows that Indian carriers would have only five frequencies a week left to Vietnam, while Vietnamese carriers have exhausted all their rights. There remain few destinations which are open skies as part of the 18 destinations open skies policy for ASEAN based carriers. Vietjet is already exercising its rights on some of these.
A first-mover that took its time
IndiGo has the distinction of being the first Indian carrier, and the first airline of any nationality, to fly non-stop between India and Vietnam. It announced its Vietnam plans in July 2019 and launched Kolkata–Hanoi on October 3, 2019, followed just over two weeks later by Kolkata–Ho Chi Minh City on October 18, 2019. VietJet followed within weeks with its own Delhi services, becoming the second airline on the corridor.
Despite that head start, IndiGo’s Vietnam network stayed anchored to Kolkata for years, even as India-Vietnam leisure traffic kept climbing well past the 200,000-odd Indian visitors projected for 2019. It took until December 20, 2025 for IndiGo to add a second Indian gateway, launching daily Delhi–Hanoi service, six years after the original Kolkata launch. Ho Chi Minh City, meanwhile, never grew beyond its Kolkata connection, and IndiGo suspended the route starting July 2026, in what has been described as a temporary arrangement. However, the launch of Mumbai – Hanoi and unavailability of flights to Ho Chi Minh in winter schedule on the airline website is indicative that Ho Chi Minh City operations have been suspended beyond the “temporary” phase. This would make Air India the only Indian carrier to offer services to Ho Chi Minh City, which is the largest city in Vietnam and also the largest airport by air traffic.
Consolidating around Hanoi
The pattern that emerges is a deliberate narrowing of IndiGo’s Vietnam network to a single city, Hanoi, served from three metros, rather than a broader spread across two Vietnamese cities from fewer points. That is a shift from the airline’s original strategy, where Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam’s larger commercial centre and closer to the traditional India-Vietnam demand pool of Delhi and Mumbai, was expected to be the more important market of the two. This also leaves passengers without the option of an open-jaw itinerary with IndiGo.
Part of the explanation likely lies in yields and yield-supporting factors rather than raw demand. Ho Chi Minh City sits noticeably farther from every Indian gateway than Hanoi, adding block time and cost on narrowbody equipment without a corresponding fare premium, especially on a corridor where Vietnamese carriers set the pricing due to huge capacity being deployed. With IndiGo, Air India and now Akasa Air all favouring Hanoi over Ho Chi Minh City for their newer additions, Air India remains the only Indian carrier still serving Ho Chi Minh City, giving it a market to itself even as competition intensifies on Hanoi. Air India’s flights are timed to cater to its connecting network via Delhi. The Mumbai launch also fits IndiGo’s broader Stretch rollout, where premium-leaning international routes from its bigger metros get the extra-legroom product first.
Network Thoughts
IndiGo’s Vietnam story is a reminder that first-mover advantage counts for little without follow-through. Six years (including pandemic period) passed between the original Kolkata launch and the addition of a second Indian city, a gap wide enough for Air India and Akasa Air to both enter the market and for Vietnamese carriers to entrench a two-thirds share of weekly capacity despite Indians making up the overwhelming majority of traffic. IndiGo is now moving faster, adding Delhi in December 2025 and Mumbai less than a year later, but it is doing so by consolidating rather than expanding its city coverage in Vietnam. While the Vietnamese side seems to have distributed the rights almost equally between Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet, the rights distribution situation on the Indian side remains unknown, publicly.
The Ho Chi Minh City exit, even if framed as temporary, leaves Air India as the sole Indian flag carrier on that city pair, at least for now. That is a meaningful gap given Ho Chi Minh City’s size and its historical pull as the more requested of the two Vietnamese metros among Indian travellers. Whether IndiGo returns will likely depend on whether narrowbody economics on the longer sector improve, along with availability of rights to fly more.
For now, Hanoi is where the competitive heat is building. Three Indian carriers will soon serve the city, with Mumbai alone hosting two of them within weeks of each other. Vietnamese carriers still control the lion’s share of capacity on the overall corridor, but Indian carriers are, for the first time since 2019, converging their growth on the same city rather than spreading thin. Whether that translates into fare competition or simply a bigger slice of a growing pie is the question worth watching this winter.
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