New Delhi, Mar 8: Air India Sunday announced that it will operate 78 additional flights across nine international routes between March 10 and March 18, 2026, to assist passengers amid the ongoing West Asia situation.

The airline is deploying extra capacity to destinations including New York (JFK), London (Heathrow), Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Colombo, and Malé. According to the release, the move will add 17,660 seats in both directions across these routes.

The trips include Delhi-New York (JFK), Delhi-London (Heathrow), Mumbai-London (Heathrow) for "boosting much-needed capacity when travel options for passengers remain constrained," it said.

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Further planes will fly from Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, Zurich, Male and Colombo to Delhi.

 The additional flights on the European routes will operate with B787-8 and those to Male and Colombo will be operated with A320neo aircraft. The flights to New York (JFK) are subject to the requisite regulatory approvals and would operate with Air India's B777-300ER aircraft.

"Despite the odds, Air India continues to maintain its scheduled services to Europe and North America, sustaining connectivity to several international gateways using alternative routings that are assessed as safe for operations,” said Nipun Aggarwal, Chief Commercial Officer, Air India.

“We are confident that passengers in need to travel to destinations in these regions will appreciate the additional options and reliability with Air India," he added.

Due to continuing airspace restrictions in other parts of West Asia, the airlines will operate additional non-scheduled flights on March 8, the airline had said in another statement.

“Air India will run extra flights between Delhi and Mumbai and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates. Air India Express will also operate 30 additional flights between India and UAE cities including Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah and Sharjah,” the statement reads.

(IANS)