Air India axes summer flights

Air India has stopped selling tickets for direct flights from Mumbai to Hong Kong for this summer on its website due to ongoing protests.

The airline started direct flights between Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport in Mumbai and Hong Kong on September 19, but has decided to cancel the route this summer and take ticket sales offline.

Available sale tickets are only valid until March 29 and after the summer on October 24 this year.

But passengers looking to travel to Hong Kong with the airline have to take indirect flights with a layover in New Delhi or take a direct flight with another airline.

Indian tourist arrivals declined 9.5 percent to 318,015 for the first 11 months last year, according to Hong Kong Tourism Board figures.

Simple Flying, a website for aviation information, speculated as to why Air India decided to drop this route for the summer -the unrest in Hong Kong, financial troubles, or the need for aircraft for its new London route.

"Hong Kong isn't an attractive money maker at this time. Thanks to the unrest in the city, tourism has massively decreased and likely many domestic passengers are in no rush to travel there," Nicholas Cummins wrote on the website.

He said Air India does not have through traffic, unlike Cathay Pacific with Hong Kong as its hub. People would prefer to take Cathay to fly between Hong Kong and Mumbai.

"The second theory would be that Air India is cash poor at the moment and needs to squeeze as much out of its route network as they can. If a Boeing 787-8 is flying empty to Hong Kong every day, and they have to pay the associated wages, landing fees and other costs, it doesn't make much sense," he wrote.

He also said the airline needs the aircraft and Mumbai landing slots to fly its new London route.

"If the first two theories are correct, then switching resources from Hong Kong to London makes financial sense."

As for the route resuming in October, he believed the route might be canceled again in the summer, but that is more likely that Hong Kong Kong to Mumbai travel will increase in late 2020 and that the unrest will have ended by then.