Air India is appealing to the government for higher defence ministry approvals to access restricted airspace over China’s Xinjiang region, its chief vigilance officer, J.R. Lulla, said in a June letter, seen by Reuters and reported here for the first time. The company wants to establish a Hotan–Kashgar–Urumqi corridor to avoid detours and losses. November 19, 2025.
The petition pegs the impact of the ban at $455 million annually, versus a fiscal 2024–25 net loss of $439 million, with fuel use up as much as 29 per cent and some flights three hours longer. Air India also seeks emergency access to Hotan, Kashgar, and Urumqi to enable safe diversions and recover capacity on North America and Europe routes.
Air India has already shut down its service, a nonstop flight between Delhi and Washington, saying it was doing so because the long-distance aircraft used on the route are now grounded and will be in the future when it would fly over Pakistan. The carrier says that, without government assistance, other ultra-long flights, such as Mumbai-Bengaluru to San Francisco, might also prove uneconomic once extended routings are factored in.
Tensions flared in February, and Pakistan closed its airspace to Indian airlines on April 24 following tit-for-tat restrictions. That action forced Indian carriers to fly around Pakistan, burning time and fuel across Westbound networks.
Those costs and detours were detailed in a Reuters analysis the next day, which noted that pilots’ rosters and schedules needed to be redone as flights took longer on southern routes.
And for all the renewed air links between India and China, which established direct flights last year after a five-year hiatus, access to the militarized corridor of Xinjiang remains sensitive — ringed by high terrain and overseen by the Chinese military’s Western Theater Command.
There is a precedent for those expensive closures. Pakistan reopened its airspace in July 2019 after a similar standoff with India, which led to months of airline diversions at a cost of millions of dollars.
Through the turbulence, Air India has sought to expand, announcing in 2023 a record order for 470 jets under Tata ownership to overhaul its wide-body fleet and cabins.
Analysts doubt Beijing will open the corridor any time soon. “Air India can try, but it is unlikely that China would agree,” Shukor Yusof of Endau Analytics said, according to Reuters. The filing also points to legacy tax claims totaling $725 million and requests a temporary subsidy as long as Pakistan’s ban remains in place.
Global airspace restrictions exacerbate the squeeze. (Several U.S. carriers, for their part, have stayed out of Russia since a U.S. prohibition on Russian flights in 2022 reshaped trans-Pacific and trans-polar routing.) Air India: Access in Xinjiang would trim extra fuel and time … Airline says the access proposed is likely to cut out extra fuel and time, put a stop to traffic shifts to other carriers, and result in a reduction of weekly losses.
