Air India flight from Ahmedabad to London cancelled due to aircraft unavailability

This comes amid heightened scrutiny of Air India’s operations following Ahmedabad crash, which involved a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner.

Updated on: Jun 17, 2025, 15:18:27 IST

By Maulik Pathak, Ateeq Shaikh

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Air India on Tuesday cancelled its Ahmedabad-London Gatwick airline (AI 159) due to unavailability of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner aircraft, said an official at Ahmedabad airport.

Air India flight from San Francisco to Mumbai which suffered a technical snag in one of its engines due to which passengers had to be deplaned during a scheduled halt at the Kolkata airport, Tuesday, June 17, 2025. (PTI)

The AI160 flight was scheduled to depart from Ahmedabad to London Gatwick at 1:10pm.

The flight AI159 was originally scheduled to depart from London at 10pm on June 16 and arrive in Ahmedabad at 9:20am on June 17, but it departed at 11:16pm from London on June 16 and arrived in Ahmedabad at 1:24pm on June 17.

It was rescheduled to depart from Ahmedabad at 3pm but later it was cancelled, the official added.

“Flight AI159 from Ahmedabad to Gatwick has been cancelled today due to the unavailability of the aircraft, resulting from airspace restrictions and additional precautionary checks, leading to longer than usual turnaround of aircraft, and not due to any technical snag as claimed,” spokesperson of Air India said.

“We regret the inconvenience caused to our passengers and have made alternative arrangements to fly them to their destination. We are providing hotel accommodation and also offering full refunds on cancellations or complimentary rescheduling if opted by the passengers. Consequently, flight AI170 from London Gatwick to Amritsar of 17 June stands cancelled,” the official added.

The cancellation comes amid heightened scrutiny of Air India’s operations following the Ahmedabad crash, which involved a Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner, the same aircraft type as flight AI 159. The crash led to the deaths of 241 of the 242 people on board.

Air India will not operate flight number AI171 - the flight which crashed near Ahmedabad Airport on Thursday - anymore and it has has decided to replace it with flight number AI159, officials told HT.

“The flight from Ahmedabad to Gatwick will be re-numbered to AI 159. The return flight will also be changed to AI160,” the officials added.

“The idea behind changing the number of a flight is to avoid triggering trauma or bad memories,”, a former airline official said.

“It is also a way to disassociate the route from the tragedy in the minds of passengers and travellers,” he added.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Maulik Pathak
He is an Ahmedabad-based journalist with more than two decades of experience. His career spans business journalism and general news, with reporting across politics, crime, governance, public policy, business, industry, infrastructure, energy, ports, aviation, the environment, wildlife and social issues. He began his career in feature writing before moving into business journalism, reporting on companies and sectors including energy, infrastructure, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and real estate. Over the years, his work expanded to politics, courts, crime, public policy, civic affairs, the environment and wildlife. His reporting has taken him from government offices and courtrooms to factory floors, ports, forests and remote villages, covering stories that range from industrial investments and financial markets to elections, conservation and issues affecting everyday life. While many assignments demand the pace of the daily news cycle, others require sustained reporting over months and years to follow developments beyond the headlines. He started his journalism career with the Asian Age in Ahmedabad in 2002 as a feature writer and sub-editor. Since 2022, he has been working with Hindustan Times. Earlier, he worked with Business Standard, DNA, The Economic Times, Mint and The Times of India. His longest stint was with Mint, where he spent more than eight years reporting across multiple beats. During his career, he has worked in both reporting and editing roles, contributing to page planning, local editions and special editorial projects as newsrooms evolved from print-first operations to digital publishing. Early in his career, he also worked on media and documentary projects with an NGO and as a copywriter at a communications agency before returning to journalism. Away from work, he sometimes makes time for a pair of binoculars, table tennis, cinema and the occasional poem.Read More

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