Air India Express added 40 routes for winter. Four go to Thailand, none to Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia.

Air India Express published its winter schedule yesterday. From 25 October it adds more than 40 new routes and runs about 585 flights a day, the largest network the airline has flown in a winter season.

Four of the new international routes go to Thailand. More than a dozen go to the Gulf. None go to Vietnam, Malaysia or Indonesia. India's second-biggest low-cost carrier has made its largest capacity bet in years and left out three of the destinations Indians book hardest.

What the airline announced

The release is dated 5 October and its numbers are specific. Of the 585 daily flights, about 435 are domestic and up to 150 international, on a fleet of more than 105 aircraft. Weekly flying rises from around 3,150 in the summer schedule to nearly 4,100, and one-stop connections from about 1,330 a week to close to 1,600. The rollout is phased, which is the line to remember when you book.

Chairman Nipun Aggarwal said the scale reflects confidence in India's growth, then in the same breath noted high fuel costs and a commitment to disciplined growth. Airlines do not usually staple a hedge to their own good news.

The four Thailand routes

• Indore to Bangkok, four a week. No start date was published for this one.
• Kochi to Bangkok, four a week from 25 October on Sundays, Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, on a Boeing 737. Out of Kochi at 10.15pm, landing 3.55am; back from Bangkok at 4.55am, into Kochi at 7.40am. AirAsia and Thai Lion already fly it, so this is a third option rather than a new link.
• Visakhapatnam to Bangkok, twice a week from 27 October. IX 904 leaves Vizag 11.30am on Tuesdays and Fridays, lands 4pm. IX 903 leaves Bangkok 2.10am on Wednesdays and Saturdays, into Vizag 3.55am. Economy fares at announcement were quoted at ₹16,300 to ₹19,400 one way.
• Hyderabad to Phuket, four a week. Air India Express has flown Hyderabad to Phuket since January 2025 and added Bengaluru to Phuket in June, so what changes here is frequency, not the route.

The Kochi timings look fine in a search result and cost you money. A 10.15pm departure puts you at Suvarnabhumi at four in the morning, about ten hours before a hotel will give you a room, and the 4.55am return means leaving that hotel around half past two. Vizag's 2.10am departure is the same problem with a longer sit. These are not bad flights, they are cheap ones, and the price is sleep. If a nonstop saves you ₹3,000 against a daytime connection through Chennai or Hyderabad, the connection usually wins once you add back the hotel night.

Twice a week also fixes your trip length before you choose anything else. Out of Vizag, Tuesday out and Saturday back is four nights, Friday out and Wednesday back is five, and Tuesday out and Wednesday back is one. Pick the pairing before the fare.

For a short Bangkok block, the booking that pays for itself doubles as transport.

The Chao Phraya hop-on boat at ₹368 is the cheapest thing we sell in Bangkok and the only sightseeing the traffic cannot reach. On four nights it saves you about an hour a day. Book nothing else for the morning you land off a red-eye.

If Phuket is the trip, Hanuman World from ₹959 is the half-day to hold in reserve: ziplines and skywalks through canopy, finished by lunch, and no need for the sea to behave. On four weekly flights your departure day is dead anyway, so keep a full-day boat off it.

The Gulf half, and the Goa trap

Most of the 40 are Gulf routes. In the UAE the airline is adding Dubai to Goa's Dabolim airport, Abu Dhabi to Goa's Mopa airport, Abu Dhabi from Amritsar, Ras Al Khaimah from Lucknow at four a week and from Mangaluru, and Sharjah from Bhopal, Chandigarh and Surat. Beyond that it is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain: Delhi to Riyadh at four a week, Lucknow to Riyadh at three, Kuwait from Kochi, Mangaluru and Mumbai, and Bahrain and Riyadh from Thiruvananthapuram. Bengaluru to Kathmandu goes daily and Chennai to Singapore twice daily.

Where no frequency appears above, none was published, so treat that route as announced rather than scheduled.

The Goa pair needs care. The state has two airports about 60km apart and the airline is about to fly UAE routes from both. Mopa is in the far north; Dabolim is 30km from Panaji. Book Goa to Dubai on price alone, land at the wrong one, and you have added an hour and a long taxi to the trip you chose Goa for. Dabolim lost most of its international traffic to Mopa after 2023 and Air India Express is one of the few carriers that kept flying abroad from it, which is why both codes now sit side by side in your results. Read GOI or GOX, not the word Goa.

The dirham is at about ₹26.30, which makes paid attractions in the UAE expensive next to Thai ones. Three that survive the comparison.

The Dubai Frame at ₹1,261 is the one to book first: cheap, ninety minutes, and the view explains how the city is laid out better than anything taller does. The View at The Palm at ₹2,287 is the better of the two observation decks we sell near this price, because it looks at something other than more towers. The Abu Dhabi City Tour at ₹2,215 earns its place only if you fly into Abu Dhabi on one of these new routes, where the sights are a long drive apart.

What has not improved

More flights to Thailand do not make Thailand easier to enter. Indians have had 30 days visa-free rather than 60 since 15 September, the Thailand Digital Arrival Card is compulsory and must be filed within 72 hours of arrival, and a separate 450-baht entry fee is still working towards collection in 2027 without being in force. None of that moved this week.

The UAE visa is still something you arrange rather than something that comes with the ticket. Reporting this year on which other countries' visas qualify an Indian passport for visa on arrival has been inconsistent, so check with UAE immigration or your airline rather than assuming you can settle it on landing.

What to do about it

• Do not book against the announcement. Phased means some routes start weeks after 25 October and no start date has been given for every one. Search your real dates and hold a flight number.
• Price the nonstop against a connection with the hotel night included. On the Kochi and Vizag timings it often goes the other way.
• On Goa to the UAE, check the airport code before you pay.
• Take the longer pairing on a twice-weekly route. The fare gap is usually smaller than the extra days are worth.
• If the trip is Bali, Hanoi or Kuala Lumpur, none of this helps you. Your fare still depends on IndiGo, VietJet, Batik and Malaysia Airlines.

What is still unsettled

Air India Express flew Kuala Lumpur and stopped. A carrier that has already left one Southeast Asian route is not an obvious bet to add three more, and the chairman's line about fuel is the airline saying so in its own language. Added routes also get pulled: Thai AirAsia cut about 30% of its seats in May and June before restoring six Indian routes for winter. And the list above is a press release, not a timetable. Frequencies for most of the Gulf additions and start dates for most of the 40 have not been published, and the 40 includes domestic routes.

Forty new routes, and the three countries Indians keep booking are not among them. That tells you where this airline thinks the money is, not where you want to go.

This is a Gulf and Thailand schedule with a Singapore and Kathmandu edge. If you fly to the UAE from a city that has had to connect through Delhi or Mumbai, it is the best winter you have had. If you were waiting on a cheap nonstop to Bali or Hanoi from a tier-two city, keep waiting.

Figures, routes and timings were read on 6 October 2026 from the Air India Express winter schedule release of 5 October as carried by Aviation World and Travel Trade Journal, Onmanorama and Deccan Chronicle of 8 September on the Kochi and Visakhapatnam schedules and fares, the airline's published destination list for its Kuala Lumpur and Phuket history, The Goan on Dabolim, Thai immigration guidance on the 30-day exemption and the arrival card, and a dirham rate of ₹26.30 on 5 October. Schedules move before they fly. Our prices are today's, so trust your voucher over this page.