Air India announces international flight network upgrades for 2025

To introduce retrofitted A320neo on Delhi-Bangkok flights and deploy A321neo, B787-9 planes on other key routes

The airline will introduce retrofitted A320neo planes on all Delhi-Bangkok flights. It will deploy erstwhile Vistara planes, which have better interiors than old Air India wide body planes, on India-Frankfurt and India-Singapore flights. It has also retimed its flights to Frankfurt, Paris, Sydney, and Melbourne to ensure that passengers, who want to take the forward flights, can easily do so.    In a press release, the airline said it will deploy its retrofitted A320neo planes on all flights between Delhi and Bangkok from January 16 next year. The airline currently operates three daily flights between Delhi and Bangkok. It said that it will start a fourth daily service between the two cities from January 1.    "The new service leads to evenly spaced departures to and from Bangkok throughout the day, offering both business and leisure travellers more choices. The increased frequency connects Bangkok to several destinations in North America and Europe via Air India’s hub in Delhi," Air India said.    The airline also announced the deployment of the A321neo and B787-9 planes, which were with Vistara, on Delhi-Frankfurt, Mumbai-Frankfurt, Delhi-Singapore, and Mumbai-Singapore routes. Vistara was merged into Air India last month, and its planes are being retrofitted.    Air India said that from February 1, it would operate flights on Delhi-Frankfurt and Delhi-Paris routes as per an "optimised" schedule.  "Air India has also retimed its daily flights on the Delhi-Sydney and Delhi-Melbourne routes to enable seamless two-way connectivity between Europe and Australia or points in Southeast Asia via Delhi," it said.    Travellers from London, Paris, and Frankfurt can now easily take one-stop connections to Sydney and Melbourne in Australia, and to points like Bangkok, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Ho Chi Minh City in Southeast Asia via Delhi, it added.    Air India currently has about 210 planes in its fleet. Its low-cost airline subsidiary Air India Express has about 90 planes in its fleet. Air India Group expects the number of planes in its fleet to increase in the next three years from 300 to about 400.