Air India has put its summer plans for Mumbai to Hong Kong on ice and suspended ticket sales on their website. Whilst the airline has not confirmed the reasons why we can only suspect it is due to financial problems and the massive decrease in Hong Kong demand.
According to CAPA, Air India has stopped selling tickets to Hong Kong from Mumbai for Summer 2020.
The flights were originally pitched back in June 2019, and announced via twitter:
The daily service only started on the 19th of September last year (2019 for those who haven’t caught up yet) with a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
Air India planned to change the route over the summer to the following configuration.
Outbound
Flight Number: AI316
Departing Mumbai (BOM) at 8:20 AM, arriving in Hong Kong (HKG) at 1650 PM local time
Inbound
Flight Number: AI311
Departing Hong Kong (HKG) at 1805 PM, arriving in Mumbai (BOM) at 2150 PM the same day.
However, it now seems that they have decided to cancel this route entirely and taken ticket sales offline. The sale ticket available for purchase is on the 29th of March 2020 until well after summer on the 24th of October 2020.
Passengers looking to travel during that time from this airport to Hong Kong might have to settle for the Cathay Pacific service.
Three main theories might explain why Air India decided to drop this route from their summer network.
The first is that 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. Additionally, Air India doesn’t have the through traffic like Cathay Pacific does (Hong Kong is their hub) and anyone who did want to travel onwards would be flying Cathay Pacific (who already serves Mumbai).
01/01/20 Nicholas Cummins/Simple Flying
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According to CAPA, Air India has stopped selling tickets to Hong Kong from Mumbai for Summer 2020.
The flights were originally pitched back in June 2019, and announced via twitter:
The daily service only started on the 19th of September last year (2019 for those who haven’t caught up yet) with a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.
Air India planned to change the route over the summer to the following configuration.
Outbound
Flight Number: AI316
Departing Mumbai (BOM) at 8:20 AM, arriving in Hong Kong (HKG) at 1650 PM local time
Inbound
Flight Number: AI311
Departing Hong Kong (HKG) at 1805 PM, arriving in Mumbai (BOM) at 2150 PM the same day.
However, it now seems that they have decided to cancel this route entirely and taken ticket sales offline. The sale ticket available for purchase is on the 29th of March 2020 until well after summer on the 24th of October 2020.
Passengers looking to travel during that time from this airport to Hong Kong might have to settle for the Cathay Pacific service.
Three main theories might explain why Air India decided to drop this route from their summer network.
The first is that 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. Additionally, Air India doesn’t have the through traffic like Cathay Pacific does (Hong Kong is their hub) and anyone who did want to travel onwards would be flying Cathay Pacific (who already serves Mumbai).
01/01/20 Nicholas Cummins/Simple Flying
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