As Air India advertises flights to London Heathrow and Vistara gets a foot in the door, a fight is looming for the remaining slots

Both airlines have in the past filed for slots at London Heathrow. SpiceJet had come very close to launching flights, having started the sale of seats as well, before it pulled out.

In more ways than one, the next few seasons will seal the deal for London flights to occupy the space vacated by Jet Airways, which once had a strong footing at London Heathrow.

What is Air India doing right now?

Air India will operate 42 weekly flights to London Heathrow but the slots scattered across the day are presenting its own challenges. Pre-COVID, the airline had operations from Mumbai, Delhi and Ahmedabad.

The Ahmedabad flight continued to New York, which was later changed to add Bengaluru-London Heathrow flights. The airline has approval for 56 weekly flights, as was the case pre-COVID as well. This means the airline could potentially add 14 more flights in the season.

These are currently planned with double daily from Delhi, 12 weekly from Mumbai, four weekly each from Ahmedabad and Amritsar, thrice a week from Goa and Kochi and twice a week service from Hyderabad. With this, it competes with British Airways and Virgin Atlantic but with a challenge -- split slots!

The schedule on the route shared by travel data provider OAG Aviation, exclusively for this article, shows how fragmented the Air India schedule is. Air India has monopoly operations to London Heathrow from Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Kochi and Goa. British Airways, likewise, has a monopoly to Chennai.

The biggest markets though remain Delhi and Mumbai, where a heady mix of business and leisure travellers form a majority of the passengers. While the leisure travellers could look at convenient timings, business travel often works on flight timings, which are consistent across days and easily remembered.

Cut to current operations of Air India and one sees that the timings are scattered all over. For the 12 departures a week from Mumbai, there are eight different departure times! This winter, Air India will also see competition from Air Canada on the sector.

Operations from Delhi are no different. There are six different departure times for its 14 times a week flight. The airline competes with Virgin Atlantic, British Airways and Vistara on this sector. Delhi-- London is the largest market by size between India and the UK.

Slots an eternal challenge

What the passengers know, the airline already knows! This definitely is not an operation by choice by any airline. One of the reasons for the fragmented schedule is rotating the aircraft across multiple stations in the country, the other obviously is availability of slots at London Heathrow.

While both British Airways and Virgin Atlantic can swap amongst their own slots to get a consistent operating time as they have a large number of flights, London being their base, the same is not true for Air India (Air India can possibly do that at Delhi or Mumbai for the same reasons).

The other challenge also is the availability. While bilateral rights allow 56 weekly flights, over the years demand from airlines to reach that number have been met with challenges like slot allocation. Without a slot, a bilateral right is meaningless!

Window for new carrier?

Vistara was allocated a permanent slot this season after operating on limited time approvals in the past. The onset of the pandemic leading to reduced operations followed by a ban on Russian carriers has meant that slots were opened up at Heathrow. World Slot Allocation Guidelines by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) push the airport operator to welcome new carriers and new routes.

Currently the Indian side (Air India and Vistara) are utilising only 33 of 56 weekly flights to Heathrow. Air India holds the trump card of being able to utilise all current slots to operate from Mumbai and Delhi in a jiffy, making it difficult for a new carrier to enter and make its mark.

As IndiGo looks at inducting widebody aircraft and SpiceJet has in the past opened reservations and closed them later for non-stop flights to London, the focus is back on which would be another carrier from India.

Without a renegotiation of the Air Services Agreement, the going looks impossible for Jet Airways -- if and when it restarts and inducts widebodies. The airline once had a formidable presence at London Heathrow!

All eyes for now would be on Air India on how soon it manages to get its schedule in some order to make it attractive, simple and crisp! While the UK faces challenges on multiple fronts, the love from London is not lost among Indians!