View: For India to become an aviation hub, first fix airport terminal connectivity

Earlier this year, discussions progressed on the high-speed connectivity between Noida International Airport and Delhi Airport. The demand was to halve the travel time and restrict the number of stations to six on a dedicated airport express line.

As the new airport at Jewar is expected to see its first flight next year, the airport is talking about connectivity with the current airport as well as extending the existing metro lines to have connectivity from NOIDA and Greater NOIDA. It may sound funny but plans are being made to connect the existing airport with an in-construction airport when the three terminals of the current airport are not seamlessly connected to each other.

As the union cabinet works towards having a policy in place that involves areas under various ministries like Civil Aviation and Home to begin with, the time to act was yesterday. But as they say, it's better late than never.

What makes an aviation hub?

A handful of things need to align themselves well for a perfect hub to be created. It starts with a strong airline, voluminous local traffic, Infrastructure, connectivity, easy transfers, government policy and location. Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport, which is the largest airport in the country ticks most of these.

It has not one but two strong airlines, namely Air India and IndiGo. With a large local traffic and catchment area, it already acts as a hub for both airlines. Pre-COVID, Air India had 3.56 million transit passengers at Delhi, while IndiGo had 6.28 million transit passengers.

With a fourth runway, the airport has the best airside infrastructure in the country; the connectivity index is high since 70% of Indian airports are within 90 minutes by air from Delhi and the location also lies on major air routes which carry traffic from Europe to South East Asia. Then where does the challenge lie? The challenge lies in policy and transfers.

After all these years of expansion, there isn’t an easy way to transfer between the three terminals at Delhi, with all options being on the city side, which is tedious and time consuming. The inability to have a sky-train or internal buses has meant that transit times across terminals is high making the connection an inefficient and thus unattractive one. The rules around security, which involves a re-security even when the passenger has been in a sterile area at all times, adds to the challenges.

Highest pain for IndiGo

IndiGo may not have wide body aircraft (just yet), but it carries more passengers than Air India on the international side as well. Additionally, IndiGo has codeshare and interline arrangements with Turkish Airlines, American Airlines, Air France-KLM, Qatar Airways, Qantas, Virgin Atlantic and British Airways.

A split terminal operation means that passengers connecting to and from IndiGo have to make their own way between terminals, with luggage in case of arrivals - a thought which isn't very happy or conducive to opt for such a connection.

Operating from three terminals at Delhi (and two at Mumbai) has meant that IndiGo passengers have to hop, skip, jump across terminals for connections and the airline is always in a flux when it comes to offering optimum connections.

Is it possible for this reason that the airline is holding on to ordering widebody planes? Neither the operations nor the connections would be optimal and leave aside taking on the global biggies and hub carriers from the middle east, even competing with Air India or Tata group of airlines ( which are consolidated at one hub ) will become a challenge.

Multi policy levers can make it work

Worldwide, airlines trying to establish hubs have worked in tandem with the government to have a transit-visa on arrival or transit holidays which helps showcase the country, spur economy and help grow as a hub. We are a far cry from that, for we still struggle to have all our immigration counters open at peak time - presumably due to shortage of staff.

An attitude to find a solution rather than pushing back on options and the fact that it can be done in Delhi if it has been done in Singapore or Frankfurt is what should drive decision making from here on. As Air India becomes stronger and IndiGo expands wings, with or without widebody aircraft, the hub carriers in the region are going to try and woo Indians away from the local airlines.

The counter to this is not just low fares or seamless connectivity but to woo passengers from those markets and transfer them via Delhi (or Mumbai). The opportunity has been staring at us for a very long time, it is for the ecosystem—airports, policies, ATC, BCAS and others—to pounce and make it work for the sake of aviation and the country.

The author, Ameya Joshi is an aviation analyst.