Air India returns to Amsterdam after 26 years; its ninth European destination

Amsterdam will welcome Air India this summer. It joins other carriers to have launched Amsterdam recently or will do so soon, including PLAY (December 2021) and JetBlue (August 2023).

After last serving the Dutch airport 26 years ago, Air India will launch a 4-weekly Delhi-Amsterdam service on 11 June using the Boeing 787-8. It will be the only Indian carrier in the Netherlands and the second operator on the 6,380-kilometre airport pair, joining KLM (daily). With 11-weekly flights, Delhi becomes Amsterdam’s joint third most-served Asian destination (excluding the Middle East) based on August flights.

Air India will target the point-to-point Amsterdam-Delhi market (~139,000 passengers in 2019) along with connecting passengers across India and to major Southeast Asia cities. It will be the first time since 2019 that the market has had more than one airline (when Jet Airways ceased operating). It will also be the first time since that pre-pandemic year that any of Amsterdam’s three Indian destinations has had two carriers.

Air India’s coming route is one of several new long-haul services from Amsterdam this summer. Others include China Southern from Beijing PKX (4-weekly from 26 March; replaced PEK); Air Canada from Montreal (5-weekly; 2 June); and JetBlue from New York JFK (daily; 29 August) and Boston (daily; 21 September).