Air connectivity is spreading, but India has a long way to go

Last week, when IndiGo connected Bengaluru to Jabalpur, it became the 100th passenger destination for Bengaluru. With 72 domestic airports connected from Bengaluru, it also surpassed Delhi, which is connected to 71 domestic airports, thus becoming the airport with the highest number of domestic airports connected in India.

An analysis done on the basis of data provided by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article throws up interesting information about the top 10 airports in the country and their domestic and international connectivity.

How do the rankings stack up?

Delhi, the largest airport in the country, continues to lead with 140 destinations, 71 of which are domestic and 69 are international. Delhi remains the most connected Indian city to International destinations. Financial capital Mumbai comes in next with 111 destinations being connected, 62 of which are domestic and 49 are international. OAG recently ranked Delhi as the 24th most connected airport in the world, while London continues to top the charts.

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Bengaluru comes in next with 100 destinations, 72 domestic and 28 international, which is all set to increase over the next few months. Hyderabad takes the number four spot with 80 destinations, comprising 62 domestic and 18 International. Hyderabad, too, will see an increase of a handful of destinations with IndiGo’s scheduled expansion taking place in the winter schedule, with flights to Kanpur, Rajkot, Agra and others already open for sale.

The two state-owned metro airports, Chennai and Kolkata, are tied at 62 destinations each. For Chennai, the split of 62 is 41 domestic and 21 international, while for Kolkata, the focus is more domestic with 49 domestic and 13 international destinations. Ahmedabad comes in next at seventh position with 49 destinations, 35 domestic and 14 international. Kochi is the only airport on the list where connectivity to international destinations is more than domestic. Kochi is connected to 33 destinations with 14 being domestic and 19 international.

Pune and Guwahati close the top 10. Pune has the lowest international connectivity, with just two destinations connected, while it is connected to 34 domestic destinations. Guwahati, the gateway to the North East, sees 22 domestic and five international destinations connected.

The next significant targets would be 150 destinations for Delhi and 50 for Ahmedabad. There also remains a lot of potential on the international side if bilateral agreements are opened up. Airports like Pune have artificial constraints in movement since they are civil enclaves at defence airfields, while Mumbai has no capacity to expand.

Also Read: How Air India managed to grab its highest domestic passenger traffic ever

Bilateral hindrance?

For many airports beyond Delhi and Mumbai, the hindrance in international connectivity is bilateral rights and recognition as point of call in the bilateral agreement. Amritsar, for instance, does not feature as a point of call for Air Canada. Similarly, there has been an extreme increase in flights between Malaysia and India; however, the lack of bilateral rights means the 18 airports which have open skies access are seeing growth rather than the metros where capacity has maxed out.

There has been very limited revision to bilateral rights in the last few years and in many cases, there has been full or near-full utilisation from both sides. Will there be a change in the policy soon? If the policy involves increasing seats, the connectivity quotient might not improve but if there is an increase in points of call, it will help with more connectivity.

Regional peers way ahead

India has the ambition of establishing a hub. Apart from passengers, connectivity matters as well. There are two large hubs in the vicinity, Singapore on the east and Dubai on the west. Apart from these, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Doha and Abu Dhabi also have strong carriers which offer one-stop connections to Indians. Singapore, a city-state, is connected to 145 destinations, while Dubai, the mega hub and home to Emirates, which has been jokingly referred to as India’s national carrier, is connected to 245 destinations worldwide.

Also Read: Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi: The busiest route in Indian skies is set for a huge change; here is why

One of the larger issues with Delhi has been geopolitical disturbances in the future. In 2019, Pakistan disallowed overflights to India, following the Balakot strike. This led to longer flight times, amongst other issues.

Airlines definitely want to expand the network, but is currently largely driven by IndiGo. Air India group, on the other hand, is trying to consolidate its offering to the market by connecting its own stations with each other as a densification of the network. Only recently has IndiGo ventured beyond the tried testing metro-only model to expand from the second set of metros and non-metros on international routes. Soon, Air India will join this expansion. India will never have the high count of Dubai or Singapore as they are largely city-states, while airlines here also cater to a large local market.