Following its decision to end services to London Heathrow, Garuda Indonesia (GA, Jakarta Soekarno-Hatta) has leased out its slots at the British gateway to Air India (AI, Delhi International). The Indonesian flag carrier operated its last flights to London from Denpasar via Medan Kuala Namu on February 1, 2020.
According to slot coordinator ACL, Air India has leased three slot pairs for evening operations on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. The lease is for two years and will expire at the end of the Summer 2021 season. Air India intends to exploit the slots for flights from Mumbai International using B787-8s.
Flights that use these slots (AI127/128) are already scheduled and will resume the moment the airline restarts operations after restrictions related to the COVID-19 pandemic are lifted.
According to the ch-aviation schedules module, Air India plans to operate 32x weekly to London Heathrow during the Summer 2020 season, including 2x daily from Delhi International (using B787-8s), 11x weekly from Mumbai (daily on B777-300(ER)s and 4x weekly on B787-8s, including the three Garuda slot flights), 4x weekly from Ahmedabad, and 3x weekly from Bengaluru International (both using B787-8s).
