You can soon fly from London to Mumbai, direct, with Air Canada

For the first time in 31 years, you’ll be able to fly Air Canada from London (UK) to Mumbai.

For the past few decades, Air Canada has been operating direct flights between Toronto and Mumbai using Boeing 777-200LR. At just under 15 hours, the route must be one of the longest in Air Canada’s network.

That will no longer be the case. From the 29th October (the route only operates seasonally, over Winter) Air Canada will be reverting to an indirect service last operated in 1991.

Instead of the Boeing 777-200LR it will fly a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner:

• AC856 will depart Toronoto at 8:30pm and arrive in London at 8:30am the following day, before continuing its journey to Mumbai at 11:10am and landing in Mumbai at 1:25am the following day – two days after departing Canada
• AC855 will depart Mumbai at 4:45am before arriving in London at 9:20am the same day and continuing its journey at midday, to land in Toronto at 2:55pm, the same day as departing Mumbai

Whilst the flights are bookable, the updated one-stop itinerary has not yet been loaded. Air Canada is expecting to hold fifth freedom rights on the route, which means you can get on at London as well. It would certainly be an unusual way to fly to India!

The schedule change was spotted by Aeroroutes.com and is likely the result of the war in Ukraine, which has resulted in Russian aerospace becoming out-of-bounds.

Take a look at this map above, from gcmap.com, which depicts the most direct route between Toronto and Mumbai. Any diversion to avoid flying over Russia probably takes the aircraft out of its operational range, so it’s back to flying with a stopover on a routing last seen during the cold war.

If you want to learn how to earn Air Canada Aeroplan miles from UK credit cards, take a look at our guide here.