Indian aircraft have been locked out of Pakistani airspace since April 2025, when relations between the two countries collapsed after the Pahalgam attack. That's a bigger problem than it sounds: Pakistan sits square in the middle of the most efficient westbound routes from northern India, so every Air India and IndiGo flight toward Europe and North America has been taking longer, costlier detours ever since.
Now Delhi is trying something unexpected. Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu says India is negotiating with China for access to airspace over Xinjiang, which would give Indian carriers a new northern corridor toward Europe and North America. The talks have been quietly running for over a year, and one route under consideration passes near Hotan, a city in the south of the region.
It's an odd pairing on paper — India and China have their own frosty border relationship — but geography doesn't care about diplomacy. A Xinjiang routing would shave meaningful time and fuel off long-haul westbound flights compared with the current workarounds, which have largely pushed aircraft further south or over the Middle East. Iran's own regional tensions have complicated those alternatives too, making the China option more attractive than it might have seemed a couple of years ago.
For now, this is still a negotiation, not a done deal. Civil aviation agreements of this kind need sign-off from both governments, and Chinese overflight rights come with their own political baggage. But the fact that discussions have persisted for more than a year suggests both sides see a practical upside. If it lands, Indian carriers would regain something close to their old route economics on some of the world's busiest long-haul corridors.
Why should travellers care? Because flight times and fares follow fuel. Since April 2025, nonstops between Delhi or Mumbai and European and North American cities have carried the cost of longer routings — sometimes in added flying time, sometimes in the ticket price. A workable Xinjiang corridor would put pressure back in the other direction, potentially shortening schedules on routes like Delhi–London or Delhi–New York. Anyone flying India to Europe or North America in the next year or two has a stake in how these talks play out. Until then, the long way round remains the only way round.
