Airline cancels flights to Canada over fuel costs

With jet fuel prices sitting at prices that are nearly double what they were before the U.S.-Israeli strike on Iran, almost every major global airline has trimmed its flight network to prioritize high-traffic routes and cut any underperforming ones.

Lufthansa has cut more than 20,000 flights from its summer schedule while also shutting down its regional carrier CityLine a year earlier than anticipated while Delta Air Lines also cut its total capacity by 3.5% earlier this spring.

Airlines such as Virgin, Air France and Air Canada have all cut flights to regional U.S. cities on which the carriers initially placed high hopes for the summer season.

Air India cuts 35% of its flights to Canada this May

When it comes to flights headed to Canada, India’s national airline Air India has cut nearly 35% of its flight schedule for the coming month over high fuel prices. The cuts include bringing down the airline’s Delhi-Toronto route from 10 times a week down to seven and its Delhi-Vancouver route from seven times a week to five.

The total number of Air India’s round-trip flights to Canada is down from 48 in April to 31 in May while more cuts are also planned for the summer months if oil prices hold steady at the current prices.

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Canadian flag carrier Air Canada also runs routes to Delhi from Toronto and Vancouver; despite also making a number of other flight cuts in response to fuel prices, the airline has not axes any of its India schedule as of the current moment.

For both airlines, these routes are particularly popular with the approximately 1.4 million members of the Indian diaspora living in Canada.

Air India is the national airline of the most populous country in the world.

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“We can only raise fares so far before people decide to stay home”: Air India

“This is in response to the massive rise in jet fuel prices which, together with airspace closures and longer flying routes, has caused many of our international flights to become unprofitable to operate,” new Air India CEO Campbell Wilson wrote in a memo sent to staff and first reported by the Canadian Press. “To partially compensate for the huge spike in costs, we have increased airfares and imposed fuel surcharges but, understandably, these higher airfares impact customer demand, so we can only raise fares so far before people decide to stay home.”

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The fare increases referred to in the memo account to what in some cases are a jump of 25% on the airline’s Delhi routes.

As of the current moment, the region in and around the Middle East has been seeing the largest number of cancelations due to the security situation as well as the cost of jet fuel. While many international airlines initially expected to restart their service to Dubai and other Middle Eastern cities by the summer, British Airways recently confirmed that it will not restart its route between London Heathrow and Abu Dhabi “until later this year” while carriers such as Lufthansa and KLM will not be running their usual flights to cities such as Amman, Oman, and Riyadh until at least October.

Related: Another airline cancels hundreds of flights, travelers stranded

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