IndiGo, Air India Flights Cancelled Today: Within hours of announcing a progressive resumption of flights at airports that were reopened Monday after being shut for nearly a week due to Operation Sindoor, Air India and IndiGo have cancelled their flights scheduled for Tuesday (May 13) to some of these airports. The airlines said that the flight cancellations were in view of “the latest developments” and keeping passenger safety in mind, without elaborating further. Notably, the cancellations were announced after precautionary blackouts were enforced in parts of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir on Monday night following suspected drone activity.
So far, the airlines have announced flight cancellations for Tuesday, and have not commented on whether these will be in place on Wednesday or beyond. Air India’s low-cost airline arm Air India Express, which had also announced resumption of flights on a few of its affected routes from Tuesday, has so far not announced any change. Budget carrier Spicejet had said that its teams were “actively working to resume normal flight operations at the earliest” but no specific flight resumption was announced.
Following the ceasefire understanding between India and Pakistan, New Delhi on Monday cancelled the temporary closure of 32 airports in parts of northern and western India, making them available for regular civil flight operations. Amid the major escalation in tensions with Pakistan last week, these airports—close to the India-Pakistan border or housed at key Indian Air Force bases—were shut for civil aircraft operations till 5:29 am on May 15 (Thursday). The closure of these airports was leading to cancellation of over 300 flights a day, industry sources indicated. Over 160 flights a day of the country’s largest airline IndiGo alone were cancelled due to these airport closures.
The affected airports included Srinagar, Jammu, Leh, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Ambala, Ludhiana, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Uttarlai, Rajkot, Bhuj, Jamnagar, Dharamshala, Bathinda, Patiala, Pathankot, Shimla, Kishangarh, Hindon, Porbandar, Mundra, and Kandla, among others. Barring a few, the majority of these airports are located at defence airfields, with some seeing only a handful commercial flights a day. Amid the military conflict between India and Pakistan, the 32 airports were closed in order to keep civilian air traffic away from potential harm.
“In view of the latest developments and keeping your safety in mind, flights to and from Jammu, Leh, Jodhpur, Amritsar, Bhuj, Jamnagar, Chandigarh and Rajkot are cancelled for Tuesday, 13th May. We are monitoring the situation and will keep you updated,” Tata group airline Air India said in a travel advisory in the wee hours on Tuesday.
Late Monday, the airline had announced that it will “progressively resume flights” to and from these airports and Srinagar “starting Tuesday”. Notably, Srinagar is not on the list of airports where Air India has cancelled flights, which indicates that the airline could operate flights to and from J&K’s summer capital on Tuesday.
India’s largest airline IndiGo late Monday announced the cancellation of Tuesday’s flights to and from Jammu, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Leh, Srinagar, and Rajkot “in light of latest developments” and with passenger’s “safety” as priority. Initially, it had announced the resumption of Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Jammu and Delhi-Amritsar flights from Monday evening. While the Delhi-Jammu and Delhi-Chandigarh flights operated without a hiccup, the airline’s Delhi-Amritsar flight turned back to the Capital midway after a precautionary blackout was enforced in Amritsar and a few other areas of Punjab, it is learnt.
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Air India Express on Monday announced resumption of flights on four routes—Hindon–Bengaluru, Jammu–Delhi, Jammu–Srinagar, and Srinagar–Delhi—from Tuesday, and Hindon–Mumbai from Wednesday. The Tata group airline said that the reinstatement of other flights, including international services from Amritsar, is expected to follow from Thursday. Air India Express has so far not announced any change in plans for Tuesday or beyond.