IndiGo Is Handing Back All Six Leased 787s and Pausing Its Heathrow Flights

On July 31, 2026, IndiGo said it will discontinue its widebody operations from October 25 and wind up the damp lease under which it has been flying six Boeing 787-9s borrowed from Norse Atlantic Airways. India’s largest airline will hand the last of those aircraft back at the end of October, and its London service goes with them.

Mumbai to Amsterdam survives the cut, but on a far smaller aircraft. From October 25 the route switches to IndiGo’s own Airbus A321XLR, a single-aisle jet with roughly a third of a 787’s seats.

Flights to and from London Heathrow are suspended outright. IndiGo said the service stays paused until its own Airbus A350-900s are delivered, the first of which is due in 2027.

What IndiGo Says Went Wrong

The airline blamed the operating environment rather than weak demand. Its statement cited geopolitical tension, airspace constraints, elevated fuel costs and currency pressure, and said those factors had hurt route efficiency, schedule integrity, connectivity and overall competitiveness.

Abhijit Dasgupta, IndiGo’s senior vice president for planning and revenue management, framed the retreat as timing rather than reversal. The industry, he said, “continues to navigate ongoing geopolitical uncertainties, necessitating a prudent deployment of resources in the short term while preserving long-term strategic objectives.”

Affected passengers will be offered alternative travel arrangements or refunds, the airline said. IndiGo puts the end of the lease at October 31; Norse Atlantic dates the termination to November 1.

A Damp Lease Was Always the Temporary Option

Airlines rent aircraft three ways, and the difference between them is who supplies the people. A dry lease is the airframe alone, flown by the customer airline’s own crews under its own operating certificate.

A wet lease, usually called ACMI, bundles aircraft, crew, maintenance and insurance, so the leasing carrier effectively operates the flight on someone else’s behalf. A damp lease sits between the two, typically supplying the flight deck while the customer airline puts its own cabin crew on board.

That middle option is what IndiGo bought, and it is why the airline could reach Europe in months rather than years. A carrier with no widebody fleet, no 787-rated pilots and no long-haul cabin structure got all three off the shelf.

The Dreamliners were never the destination. IndiGo holds firm orders for 60 A350-900s, doubled from an initial 30, with deliveries starting in 2027 and cabins configured for more than 330 seats.

Everything else in the fleet plan remains narrowbody, on a scale nobody else in the region matches. The airline recently signed a record order for LEAP engines covering more than 1,000 units.

Norse Gets Its Fleet Back, Then Puts Itself in Play

For Norse Atlantic, six returning Dreamliners is half its fleet. The Norwegian carrier operates 12 787s in total, and plans to put part of the returning capacity onto its own network over the 2026-27 winter, including New York and Orlando, while shopping up to five aircraft for new ACMI contracts.

The same day IndiGo announced the exit, Norse’s board escalated a strategic review into a formal process that may end in a sale, merger or partnership, with JP Morgan engaged to evaluate the options. Chief executive Eivind Roald said the return of the aircraft “opens up strategic opportunities that were not available to us before,” according to Travel Weekly.