This winter, Air India offers 21 weekly flights to Canada, all from Delhi, with twice-daily service to Toronto.
Diplomatic ties between India and Canada have been somewhat rocky in the past 24 hours. What began over an escalation following the ASEAN summit in LAO DPR last week has led to India pulling out its diplomats and expelling six Canadian diplomats.
In place of a culmination of the year-long diplomatic tussle, this is all set to get bigger. More often than not, aviation is a popular geo-political tool.
Pakistan had blocked off airspace for Indian carriers and flights bound to and from India after the Balasko strike in early 2019. India and China have yet to resume direct air connectivity post-COVID.
This was at a time when Russia attacked Ukraine, and Russian carriers were banned from Western airspace.
Air connectivity peaks this winter amidst the diplomatic row between India and Canada.
A peek at data shared exclusively with this article by Cirium, an analytics company specializing in aviation, reveals that there will be 39 weekly non-stop flights between India and Canada this December, 20 more than in December 2019, last winter before the COVID pandemic.
