New Delhi:
Top Indian Airlines Air India and IndiGo are working for high fuel costs and prolonged travel time as they shut down their airspace in the midst of increasing tension over a deadly terrorist attack in Kashmir.
India has said that there were Pakistani elements in Tuesday’s attack, in which gunmen shot and killed 26 people in a meadow in Pahgam area of Indian Kashmir. Pakistan has denied any participation.
Nuclear-Hathiyarband hardcore rivals have launched a part of measures against each other in response, an important river water-sharing treaty with India and closing their airspace for Indian airlines in Pakistan.
International airlines are not affected by the ban.
The impact of the airspace closure was starting late on Thursday, as Air India and IndiGo began to resume flights to New York, Azerbaijan and Dubai – all that usually use Pakistan airpaces, according to data on the tracking website flightradar24.
The worst affected airport will be New Delhi, one of the world’s busiest, from where flights cross the Pakistani airspace to fly to destinations in west and Middle East. The data from Cirium Ascend showed that IndiGo, Air India and its budget unit Air India Express had about 1,200 flights from New Delhi, set for Europe, Middle East and North America in April.
Air India flights from New Delhi to Middle East will now be forced to take up an additional flight of about an hour, which means high fuel costs to adjust the additional fuel and less cargo, an Indian aviation industry executive, who refused to identify.
IndiGo stated that some of its flights would be affected on Friday, while Air India stated on X that some “flights from North America, Britain, Europe and Middle East” would carry some alternative extended routes. ,
Ajay Avtani, founder of Aviation-centered website Livefromalounge, said, “Air India is currently the largest long and the most affected by the largest long and ultra-long hall network outside Delhi.”
The airspace closure is the latest headache for the Indian airline industry, with complex schemes already complicated by the delayed jet delivery from Boeing and Airbus. Aircraft fuel and oil cost usually for about 30% of the operating cost of the airline, the largest component ever.
An Indian airline pilot told the Reuters that the step would disrupt the schedule, but would force the airlines to re -create their calculations of flight hours in relation to the rules, and adjust their crew and pilot roster accordingly.
Another executive of an Indian airline said that the carrier was hitting foot to assess the impact with some employees working late on Thursday.
Both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief media.
Indigo flight 6E1803 from New Delhi to Baku took a long route for 5 hours and 43 minutes on Thursday, with the flightware figures, before swinging back to South -West in the state of Gujarat, India and then above the Arabian Sea, north of Azarbaijan from Iran, from Iran to Azerbaijan. The same flight through Pakistan airspace took 5 hours 5 minutes on Wednesday.
Pakistan has said that the ban will be done by May 23.
In 2019, the Government of India said that the closure of Pakistan airspace for nearly five months during the tension between neighbors at that time caused a loss of at least $ 64 million to Air India, Indigo and other airlines.
(This story is not edited by NDTV employees and auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
