New Delhi:
Top Indian Airlines Air India and Indigo are braced for higher fuel costs and longer travel times while they are redirecting international flights after Pakistan had closed his airspace for them in the midst of escalating tensions over a deadly militant attack in Kashmir.
India said that there were Pakistani elements in the attack of Tuesday in which armed men shot 26 men and killed in a meadow in the Pahalgam area of the Indian Kashmir. Pakistan has denied every involvement.
The nuclear armed bow rivals have unleashed a series of measures against each other in response, in which India keeps a critical river distribution of water exchange pending and Pakistan closes its airspace to Indian airlines.
International airlines are not influenced by the ban.
The impact of the airspace closure was visible on Thursday, when Air India and Indigo flights to New York, Azerbaijan and Dubai started to lead – all of which use Pakistan Airpsace, according to data from following website Flighttradar24.
The worst affected airport will be New Delhi, one of the busiest in the world, from where flights cross Pakistani airspace to fly to destinations in the west and the middle -east. Data from Cirium Ascend showed that Indigo, Air India and its budget unit Air India Express have combined around 1,200 flights of New Delhi for Europe, the Central East and North America in April.
The flights from Air India to the middle -East from New Delhi will now be forced to fly approximately an hour extra, which means that higher fuel costs and less load house the extra fuel, said an Indian aviation industry, which refused to be identified.
Indigo said on Friday that “a few” of his flights will be hit, while Air India on X said that some “flights from or to North America, the UK, Europe and the Midden -East will take an alternative extensive route.”
“Air India is currently the most affected with the largest long and ultra-long draft network from Delhi,” said Ajay Awtaney, founder of the LiveFromalounge website.
The closure of the airspace is the newest headache for the Indian aviation industry, with expansion plans that are already complicated by Jet delivery delays from Boeing and Airbus. Aircraft fuel and oil costs usually make up about 30% of the operating costs of an airline, by far the largest component.
A pilot from the Indian airline told Reuters that the relocation will disrupt the schemes, but will also force airlines to reinforce their calculations of flying hours in connection with regulations and to adjust their crew and pilot grilles accordingly.
Another director of an Indian airline said that the carrier was looking to assess the impact with some employees who worked until late at night on Thursday.
Both spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to report media.
Indigo Flight 6e1803 from New Delhi to Baku lasted on Thursday 5 hours and 43 minutes via a longer route where the southwest went to the state of Gujarat in India and then over the Arab Sea, before he returned to the north over Iran to Azerbaijan, appears from Flightaware data. The same flight, via Pakistan airspace, lasted 5 hours on Wednesday.
Pakistan said that the prohibition will be in force until 23 May.
In 2019, the Indian government said that the closure of the Pakistan air space for about five months during the tensions between the neighbors at that time caused a loss of at least $ 64 million for Air India, Indigo and other airlines.
(This story was not edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
