India Looks to China’s Hotan Route as Pakistan Airspace Stays Shut

I came across this today and thought it was worth sharing, especially if you’re one of the many Indian expats here in Kuwait who keeps half an eye on flight routes and fares back home.

Pakistan has kept its airspace closed to Indian carriers since April 2025, and it’s turning into a real headache for airlines flying between Delhi and destinations in Europe and North America. Longer detours mean more fuel, more cost, and now India is looking at an unusual fix: flying over China instead.

Why is this happening?

India’s aviation minister, Ram Mohan Naidu, said the government is pushing hard for the Hotan option and that diplomatic-level talks are already underway. Speaking on the sidelines of the Routes Asia event, he said India is also asking its own airlines to launch more international flights from cities in the south, where the Pakistan closure doesn’t really affect routing.

The logic is simple enough. International travel out of India has been growing by roughly 5% a year over the past decade, but airlines can’t fully chase that growth while their western routes are stuck taking the long way round. Every extra hour in the air burns more fuel, and with oil prices where they are, that adds up fast.

What’s the Hotan route, exactly?

Hotan is in China’s Xinjiang region, and using it as a waypoint would let Indian wide-body aircraft like the Boeing 777, Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 avoid the current detours caused by the Pakistan closure. Air India has already made a formal presentation on the route. IndiGo could eventually use it too, once it starts taking delivery of its own A350s.

This isn’t the first time Air India has had to reroute around a closed airspace. Before August 2021, its flights used a Pakistan-Afghanistan-Turkmenistan corridor. When the Taliban took Kabul, that route closed, and Air India shifted to a longer path via southern Pakistan, Iran and Turkey, before eventually finding a way to fly directly over the Hindu Kush mountains.

That Hindu Kush workaround wasn’t simple either. A loaded wide-body aircraft leaving Delhi for Europe or North America needs to be light enough to climb above 30,000 feet, since the range’s tallest peak, Terich Mir, sits at 25,289 feet. Airlines needed months of simulator work to certify it, and some Air India aircraft carry extra oxygen storage so they can safely step down to lower altitudes if there’s an engine issue or a cabin pressure problem while flying over that terrain.

What does this mean if you’re in Kuwait?

This particular story is mainly about India’s flights to Europe and North America, not the Gulf routes that most of us here use. But if you’re an Indian resident in Kuwait who books connecting flights through Delhi or keeps track of Air India’s finances and schedules, it’s a useful bit of background. Airline costs from closures like this tend to filter down eventually, whether through fares, capacity changes, or where airlines choose to focus new routes.

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