IndiGo announced its 81st domestic destination on Aug 21, 2023. The flights to Jaisalmer in Rajasthan will begin on the 12th of October. The airline which was very cautious with expansion in its early years and looked at just a handful of stations until mid 2010s has gone ballistic with the rapid induction of both the A320neo family as well as the ATRs.
From being conservative with expansion to being omnipresent, IndiGo has come a long way. While every time there is a talk of the expanse of the airline and the places where an airline operates to, in case of IndiGo, I decided to look at the airports where the airline does not operate to, within India! The base for this is the last financial year’s footfall data released by the Airports Authority of India (AAI).
The data
The data released by AAI has 130 domestic airports in the list. This list also has airports like those at Bengaluru – HAL, Hyderabad – Begumpet, Mumbai – Juhu and Delhi – Sardarjung, which are not operational for civil operators but controlled by the AAI.
The data was further cleansed by removing airports which are not operational at the moment like Pathankot, Nanded, Hindon or Hisar and then adding airports which weren’t operational last year like Deoghar or Shivamogga where IndiGo has operations.
This puts the total operational airports count at 113 as of today, though a lot more should be operational very soon as the next phase of UDAN moves from awarding routes to beginning of operations.
The missing 32
IndiGo will operate to 81 destinations in India on October 12th, when it launches Jaisalmer. That leaves 32 airports in India where IndiGo does not operate. Where does the list begin? IndiGo operates to the top 62 destinations in India by domestic footfall. When sorted by footfall, the first destination where IndiGo does not operate is Jharsuguda, Odisha. Alliance Air and SpiceJet operate to Jharsuguda from Bhubaneswar, Kolkata and Delhi, Hyderabad respectively and under RCS-UDAN with exclusivity.
The western part of the country sees IndiGo being away from the largest chunk of airports. In the west, IndiGo does not fly to Jamnagar, Kandla, Bhavnagar, Bhuj, Diu, Porbandar, Sindhudurg, Kishangarh and Bikaner. Except for Jamnagar the other airports are currently operating under RCS-UDAN, with exclusivity. Additionally, these destinations are best connected from Mumbai – where there are challenges with slots, even more for ATR.
In the south,IndiGo does not operate to Kalaburagi (Gulbarga), Pondycherry,Agatti, Vijayanagar, and Bidar. The current operations to these places are under RCS-UDAN. The next round has seen expansion to some of these airports like Agatti, where fly91 has bid and won routes.
In Central India, Bilaspur, Jagdalpur does not see service from IndiGo. In fact, the airline does operate to Jagdalpur, but it is not a commercial service and is operated as a charter service for paramilitary forces.
In East and North East, Kushinagar, Rupsi, Cooch Behar, Jamshedpur, Tezu, Pakyong, Pasighat, Rourkela, Jeypore, Tezpur and Ziro are not serviced by IndiGo.
In the North, Kullu, Shimla are the only places out of all operational airports where IndiGo is not flying. At both these airports, Alliance Air operates the ATR 42-600, a type which is not part of IndiGo’s fleet and it is unlikely that IndGo would operate a small sub-fleet just for two stations, even when they are believed to be high yielding.
Network Thoughts
Data on social media site “X” (erstwhile Twitter) shows IndiGo having won rights for Diu and Salem, indicating that both of these would be operational in due course of time. As the next phase of UDAN takes off, many more airports will become operational with Fly91 launching services and flybig expanding with the twin otter.
Will IndiGo look at some stations and/or routes when exclusivity ends? A look at Alliance Air’s network over the last few years shows that the airline jumps from one route to another when the exclusivity ends. The aim of RCS-UDAN is to help make a route commercially viable but the paucity of planes and outbidding others on multiple routes have led to Alliance Air vacating routes. On some occasions, if not all, IndiGo has silently captured the market which was built by another player.
Looking at the demographics, the typical travel pattern which IndiGo has been tapping and the airport potential, I would rate Kishangarh very high on the list of destinations IndiGo would look at.
As for the western part of the country, will Navi Mumbai airport do the trick? By late 2024 or early 2025, Navi Mumbai airport should start operations in Phase 1 when it may not be against turboprop aircraft. The same would be true for Noida Airport at Jewar. Could IndiGo time its ATR expansion with these two airports being operational and add the airports like Jamnagar, Bhuj, Bhavnagar on its destination list?
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As always. An informative article.
Any possible reason why Indigo chose DEL-VNS- Khajuraho over DEL-Khajuraho non-stop. Even Vistara started the same rotation in 2018-19 when they started ops to Khajuraho?
The demand moves this way. Delhi khajuraho is not a huge market in itself. Foreign visitors tend to club vns and hjr, hence the demand for these two. From 9W to KFA to UK, all did this sort of routing to cater to this demand. A small jet would suit well for DEL HJR