I’d be inclined to say that Air India's return won’t have that much of a detrimental effect on EK’s loads as primarily they are targeting the BHX-ATQ traffic, although inevitably they’re going to lose some business pax bound for DEL or onwards. I think EK should be more concerned about TK going double daily or indeed the arrival of another competitor.
Having said that, it will be interesting to see how the next twelve months unfold given that when Air India started back in 2005 there was far less competition and certainly much less capacity going east. EK were just x1 daily, PIA was only using the A310 and there was no TK. On top of all that, just look at the huge increase in LHR/MAN-Gulf traffic in the past two years and with BHX sandwiched in the middle it makes one wonder if eventually something has to give somewhere.
Interesting times.