From Gorakhpur to Gatwick, Indian airlines have big plans for this summer

Indian airlines have laid out plans to fly to more domestic as well as international destinations this summer, show the latest data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

Akasa Air plans to connect its network to cities such as Darbhanga, Gorakhpur, Prayagraj, Ranchi, Thiruvananthapuram, Durgapur, Kanpur, and Patna, as per the summer schedule data released by DGCA.

This is in line with the growth in passenger traffic seen at some of these airports.

An example is the air passenger traffic recorded at Prayagraj, a religious tourist destination located at the confluence of three rivers, the Ganga, the Yamuna, and the mythical (and said to be invisible) Saraswati.

The city’s airport recorded 560,226 passengers between April 2023 and February 2024, up 8% year-on-year and 65% more than the 339,134 passengers who travelled through the city’s airport in the pre-pandemic period between April 2019 and February 2020.

Similarly, Darbhanga airport in north Bihar, which is currently undergoing an expansion, has been witnessing an annual passenger count of over 600,000, despite being launched just three years ago in November 2020.

The airport caters to a highly mobile local population who travel to various destinations around the country for their jobs.

The DGCA’s summer schedule has also allocated the Tata Group-backed Air India slots to operate non-stop flights from Delhi to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam. The airline also plans to operate direct flights from Bengaluru to Dubai as well as to London Gatwick airport.

While slots are allocated after consultation with the stakeholders, airlines take the final call to launch a particular flight as per their network strategy, demand scenario, and market dynamics. A slot allocated by the regulator simply permits an airline to deploy a flight.

Air India Express, a subsidiary of Air India, has also received slots to launch direct flights between Mumbai and Kathmandu, and from Chennai and Kolkata to Dhaka.

The carrier, which is undergoing a merger with AIX Connect, formerly AirAsia India, also plans to start flights from Ahmedabad to Bengaluru, Pune, Varanasi, Goa, Kolkata, and Hyderabad. It has also received slots to connect Chandigarh to Bengaluru.

Air India Express is also expected to become the first major carrier to launch a set of flights from Hindon airport to Hyderabad, Kolkata, Goa, Bengaluru, and Pune. Currently, Hindon airport is only connected by regional carriers such as Star Air and Flybig.

So, what explains the rush by Indian airlines to fly to these less-served destinations?

Flying demand, says ratings agency Icra Ltd. According to one of its research notes, domestic air passenger traffic is likely to have grown by 8-13% in FY24, reaching 150-155 million, and surpassing the pre-pandemic levels of 141.2 million seen in FY20.

“We expect the demand for air travel to remain robust, and the overall operating environment to remain conducive,” said an IndiGo spokesperson to Mint.

The ratings agency expects the momentum to continue in FY25 as well, with a similar estimated YoY growth, aided by rising demand for both leisure and business travel and improving airport infrastructure.

Moreover, Icra expects international passenger traffic for Indian carriers, which surpassed the pre-pandemic levels in FY23, to cross the peak level of 25.9 million witnessed in FY19, in the current fiscal. It expects an estimated 25-27 million passengers, representing a YoY growth of 7-12%, to have travelled in FY24. The same is expected to further grow by 7-12% to 27-29 million in FY25.

In the domestic circuit, regional connectivity to cities such as Azamgarh, Chitrakoot, Aligarh, Moradabad, Shravasti, and Pithoragarh is also expected to improve as regional airline Flybig has received slots to operate flights to these destinations.

Then, there is Goa-based Fly91, which commenced flight operations earlier this month with the maiden flight between Goa and Bengaluru, has plans to operate flights to Sindhudurg, Jalgaon, Agatti, and Hyderabad apart from Bengaluru under this year’s summer schedule.

Even so, while demand sentiment remains strong for domestic and international air travel in India, airlines are struggling to maintain capacity to handle the surging demand.

For instance, India’s largest airline, IndiGo, which mostly operates an Airbus fleet of aircraft, is looking to deploy Boeing 737 MAX-8 aircraft on some routes such as Chennai-Doha, Delhi-Doha, Hyderabad-Doha, Kochi-Doha, Mumbai-Doha, Bengaluru-Doha, in the upcoming season.

“We are aiming to double in size by the end of 2030, thus, transforming IndiGo from being a domestic focussed carrier… We are focussed on expanding our network, both in our home market as well as overseas,” the IndiGo spokesperson said.

IndiGo, which operates more than 2,000 flights daily, is also expected to resume connectivity to Jaisalmer with direct flights from Mumbai and Delhi from this October. The airline had added the golden city to its network in October 2023.

Indigo is also likely to start direct flights between Raipur and Prayagraj from August, while it has also received slots to operate flights between Bikaner and Delhi.

Cumulatively, the Indian civil aviation regulator has approved 1,922 international weekly flight departures for Indian airlines in the upcoming summer season, which is a 5.1% year-on-year growth.

The DGCA approves flight departures for airlines in India twice a year, under the summer and winter schedules, respectively. The summer schedule is effective from the last Sunday of March until the last Saturday of October, and hence, this year it will be valid from 31 March to 26 October.

For the domestic segment, DGCA has approved 24,275 weekly domestic departures across 14 air operators, including IndiGo, Air India, AIX Connect, SpiceJet, Alliance Air, Akasa Air, Air India Express, Vistara, Star Air, Fly 91, Fly Big, Zooom, Pawan Hans, and India One.

The domestic weekly departures approved for the summer schedule is nearly 6% higher than the year-ago period, when the airlines were approved to operate 22,907 flights per week.