New Delhi: IndiGo will adjust its long-haul flights operated with leased Dreamliners, including suspending services to Copenhagen from February 17, as the airline seeks to tackle external operational constraints.
As part of the adjustments, necessiated by Iranian airspace uncertainties and congestion at airports, the carrier Wednesday said it will also reduce flights on Delhi–London Heathrow and Delhi–Manchester routes.
In a statement, the airline said its wide-body operation has faced external operational constraints such as continuously changing airspace constraints due to geopolitical circumstances, congestion at airports both in India and abroad.
“These factors significantly increased flight and block times causing strain over the airline’s 787-9 schedule that is operated with six wide-body aircraft,” it said.
The flights to and from Copenhagen (Denmark) will be suspended from February 17 till further notice. Currently, the airline operates services between Mumbai and Copenhagen three times a week.
From February 7, the carrier will reduce its Delhi–Manchester services to four times a week from five times per week. On this route, the number of flights will be cut to three times per week from February 19.
“This scale adjustment was originally planned to be introduced in the summer schedule 2026; however, it is being executed earlier to ensure reliability to the rest of IndiGo’s long-haul operations,” the statement said.
Further, Delhi-London Heathrow services will be cut to four from five per week for the current winter schedule starting from February 9.
IndiGo said the measures are being taken to avoid inconvenience to passengers due to misconnections and cascading delays.
According to the airline, the prevailing circumstances have affected the operational reliability on its Boeing 787-9 routes and added that it would continue monitoring these external developments and flexibly scale its network up or down to align with evolving conditions.
In March 2025, the airline started the wide-body project and decided to take six Boeing 787-9 aircraft from Norse Atlantic Airways on damp lease.
“This project was set up as an intermediate solution for global expansion and a pre-cursor to IndiGo’s own A350-900 wide-body inductions in early 2028, to gradually upgrade the airline’s internal capabilities for the larger expansion in future,” the statement said.
Meanwhile, on Tuesday, IndiGo said it has cancelled flights to and from Tbilisi (Georgia), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Tashkent (Uzbekistan) and Baku (Azerbaijan) till February 28.
Earlier, the services to these cities were cancelled till February 11 due to the prevailing situation in Iran.
“As the situation continues to evolve, our plans remain under regular review,” the airline said in a post on X on Tuesday.
For these destinations, the airline flies over the Iranian airspace and due to the current situation, it is avoiding the region.
Generally, the duration of flights from India to these cities is in the range of six to seven hours. The airline operates flights with its A320neo aircraft on these routes that do not have the range and fuel-holding capacity to operate on longer alternative routes.
Tensions have escalated between Iran and the United States, and there are apprehensions that the situation could result in a military conflict.
The airline, which faced massive operational disruptions in early December, operates around 2,200 flights daily with a fleet of over 400 planes.
PTI