India’s two largest carriers, Air India and IndiGo, have cut dozens of services to the Gulf on 6 April after new NOTAMs restricted airspace over parts of Iran, Iraq and the Emirates. According to schedules published by The Tribune and GoodReturns, Air India will operate only 30 West-Asia flights today—down from the 52 originally planned—while IndiGo is running a skeleton network subject to hour-by-hour review. Ad-hoc ‘rescue’ rotations between Delhi, Mumbai, Kochi and Dubai or Abu Dhabi remain in place but require last-minute slot clearances from UAE authorities. Services to Bahrain, Doha, Kuwait and Tel Aviv are suspended outright, and some Muscat and Jeddah flights have been consolidated onto wide-body equipment to preserve capacity. Passengers holding 6 April tickets can cancel or rebook without fees, but corporate travel managers warn that forward availability for the remainder of April is already tight. The cuts ripple far beyond leisure traffic. The Gulf corridor handles a daily wave of Indian IT consultants, energy engineers and seafarers on rotational assignments. Logistics analysts estimate that a single day of cancellations strands roughly 5,000 Indian workers across UAE and Saudi transit hubs, inflating accommodation costs for employers and pressuring visa-overstay limits. Mobility teams should advise travellers to verify flights a minimum of six hours before departure and to keep multiple ‘Plan B’ itineraries via Muscat or Colombo. Airlines recommend updating mobile contacts in PNRs to receive real-time SMS alerts. Companies with high Gulf exposure may wish to negotiate block-seats on the limited remaining services or shift meetings to virtual platforms until regional airspace stabilises.
Source: The Tribune / GoodReturns
