Air India, which recently announced flights to Manila, is adding flights to Kathmandu, Nepal; Bangkok, Thailand and Colombo, Sri Lanka. These new additions are effective July 07, 2025. This will further add to the connectivity index for Air India to offer seamless connections to North America and Europe from these countries.
Kathmandu, Nepal
- Air India will add a sixth daily flight to Kathmandu from Delhi, taking the total offering to 42x weekly.
- Rival IndiGo offers half of this, at 21 flights a week between Delhi and Kathmandu.
- Along with Air India Express (which operates Bengaluru – Kathmandu), Air India group will have 47% of all frequencies to Nepal from India.
Colombo, Sri Lanka
- Air India will double its flights from Delhi, from current daily to double daily.
- The addition helps better connectivity to Europe, now that the airline has two banks of flights to Paris and Frankfurt.
- Sri Lankan airlines is the frequency leader between India and Sri Lanka, and offers double daily services to Colombo from Delhi.
Bangkok, Thailand
- Air India is starting a third non-daily to Bangkok from Mumbai, which takes the weekly frequency up to 18x weekly from current
- Air India already operates 28 weekly flights to Bangkok from Delhi
- Rival IndiGo recently added its second daily flight to Bangkok which will help connect Bangkok to Manchester and Amsterdam via Mumbai.
All these additional flights will be operated by Air India’s three-class configured aircraft, which include a mix of former Vistara planes and the refurbished and reconfigured Air India planes. With the added frequency, Air India will operate 42x weekly flights to Kathmandu, 28x weekly flights to Colombo, and 46x weekly flights to Bangkok.
Network Thoughts
Air India has not been very aggressive in the past but with the availability of aircraft and these announcements, it indicates that Air India wants to be dominant in the market. In all the three markets where Air India is adding capacity, the presence of IndiGo is non-existent or minimal and this is the kind of capacity onslaught which IndiGo has not faced in the past.
On the domestic routes, IndiGo is being engaged with Air India Express while on the international, mainline Air India is taking on IndiGo, is how the strategy seems to be right now.
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