After Air India, IndiGo to cut wide body flights too

NEW DELHI: After Air India, IndiGo will also cut its wide bod operations due to costlier jet fuel, longer routes post airspace restrictions and forex volatility. IndiGo will “temporarily discontinue its flight operations to and from Manchester from Aug 31, 2026” and return one of the six damp leased (hired with operating crew) Boeing 787 Dreamliners to Europe’s Norse Atlantic Airways. The budget airline says it “will continue to operate all its remaining long-haul flights as planned.”

IndiGo had damp leased six Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft from Norse Atlantic in early 2025 to “make strategic inroads to establish the IndiGo brand in the European market, ahead of the commencement of services using its own Airbus A350 aircraft.” But the increase in operating costs following the US-Iran war has led to the same “being considerably higher than originally envisaged.”

Abhijit Dasgupta, IndiGo senior VP (network planning and revenue management, IndiGo, said: “We inducted these wide-body aircraft on a short-term basis to fast-track our connectivity to high potential long-haul destinations such as Manchester, and witnessed very encouraging demand response. It is, therefore, unfortunate that longer flying times due to airspace constraints coupled with dramatically escalating costs compelled us to take the decision to temporarily discontinue our India – Manchester services…. this discontinuation is temporary in nature.”

Air India also continues to significantly cut its wide body operations due to the same reasons. AI and IndiGo are also reducing domestic flights temporarily.