Air India Axes Over 1 Million Seats

Air India is following through on its fight for survival with a sharp pullback of seats across the Group, including its mainline and Express divisions.

For July, the Indian flag carrier is slashing seats, with more than 1 million being axed compared to July 2025, following surging fuel prices and ballooning losses, despite strong investment and turnaround efforts that have yielded no results.

The cuts from the airline aren’t limited to a single market; domestic and international services are a focus, and they’re enough to drag down the total number of seats available across the network.

Here’s What Air India Is Cutting

According to data, the airline sees its total capacity in India for July 2026 down around 4.7% year on year. This is largely because Air India’s mainline flying has collapsed across its domestic operations.

Air India Express domestically has cut around 16.8% of its seats, dropping from 2.7 million to 2.2 million. However, Air India has slashed international capacity by 19.2%, reducing seats for customers from 3.4 million to 2.8 million.

Together, this represents a cut of more than 1.1 million seats that were on the network and are now not available. These figures, however, are hardly a surprise, as the business has been making persistent changes to its domestic and international networks and had flagged that this would happen.

The trimming of frequencies or the removal of service to specific cities altogether has been part of a sweeping change and is certainly visible on long-haul routes, where Chicago flights from Delhi have been suspended, and Toronto and San Francisco are seeing fewer weekly flights out of Delhi as well.

Why These Cuts Are Coming

For Air India, there isn’t a single reason for the seat reduction, but rather a long list of challenges that have contributed to the airline’s axings over time.

Jet fuel prices have been of particular concern throughout 2026. The surge in these prices, driven by supply fears and conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, has led to strong volatility in the market. As fuel is a crucial component of operating costs, a year-on-year jump pushes routes into loss-making territory, even if they were only just scraping by.

Air India has also been struggling with airspace restrictions in recent years. While recent conflict has played a part in souring relations with neighbouring Pakistan, airspace usage has become complicated, adding unforeseen expenses to routing.

However, after years of troubles and even major cash injections, the significant shocks that had hit the airline, paired with a stalling turnaround, led to a loss of nearly $3 billion in the previous year, setting off internal alarms.

The airline is loss-making, and those losses, despite efforts to cut them, haven’t eased and are worsening. As a result, Air India is having to make tough choices, including deferring new aircraft orders from Airbus and Boeing to try to stem the bleeding in any way it can.

The reduction of its international and domestic operations runs counter to surging demand but is necessary if the flag carrier is to stand any chance of achieving a turnaround. If Air India didn’t make changes, it would not live to see the next decade with losses at unconstructible and unsustainable rates, even with the significant backing of the Tata Group.

Air India’s problems are so deeply ingrained in its recent memory that, irrespective of new aircraft and cabins, there’s an uphill battle to fix systemic and cultural issues that seem near impossible to turn around for some analysts looking in.

The flag-carrier remains committed to its position in the country and has a responsibility to get things right. The cuts, while temporary for now, indicate that this turnaround, though never easy, hasn’t progressed entirely as expected.