IndiGo – the country’s largest airline has been growing rapidly in terms of both fleet, reach and expanse since 2018. I have often described the airline’s network and station selection as “find a station such that you can bombard it with flights from multiple different places’ ‘. This largely held true for its narrowbody network until it started flights in the North East and subsequently last year when it started non daily operations to points in Central Asia.
Here is a look at those odd stations where there is only one destination which is connected and airports which see Daily or less than Daily flights from IndiGo.
Connected to just one station
There are 15 stations which are connected to just one destination. These 15 include 11 international and four domestic. The domestic ones are Gondia, Jorhat, Shivamogga and Pantnagar. The international ones are Almaty, Tbilisi, Tashkent, Baku and Hong Kong – which are connected only from Delhi; Jakarta and Nairobi – which are connected from Mumbai, Bali – connected from Bengaluru, Hanoi and Ho chi Minh City – connected from Kolkata and Kuala Lumpur – connected from Chennai.
Delhi leads with six destinations which are connected only to Delhi, followed by Kolkata which has three. Mumbai and Bengaluru have two such destinations, while Chennai and Hyderabad have one each such destination which has connection with only one point in IndiGo’s network.
Daily or less than Daily flights
For a low cost carrier, the most optimised costs are when there are more than one flights
Of the 15 stations which are connected to only one destination, all but Pantnagar have one flight a day or less. Pantnagar – a gateway to mountainous Uttarakhand has double daily flights from Delhi.
The airline route network has 16 such stations where it has daily or less than daily operations. Interestingly, there are only four stations where it has less than daily operations.
IndiGo has thrice a week operations to Almaty and Tbilisi, and four times a week service to Tashkent. Kurnool, on the other hand has flights six times a week but from two destinations – Vizag and Chennai.
The rest overlap with the list of stations connected to one station only except for Bareilly which has seven weekly flights with four times a week service from Mumbai and thrice a week service from Bengaluru.
Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City see daily service from Kolkata, while Kuala Lumpur is served daily from Chennai. Jakarta sees a daily flight from Mumbai, where as Bali gets a daily arrival from Bengaluru. Nairobi is served daily from Mumbai.
Network Thoughts
IndiGo has a large hub at Delhi, its largest station – from where it connects 74 out of 114 other stations in its network. Some of the 40 stations that it does not connect from Delhi are smaller stations like Kurnool, Shivamogga or Diu where there is neither traffic nor operational possibility. On the other hand, there are stations like Bali and Jakarta which are beyond the currently available range for the A320 family from Delhi, until the XLRs join the fleet.
The operationalisation of Noida International Airport at Jewar and Navi Mumbai airport could see some changes, with possibilities of slots for ATR opening up and permitting additions like say to Shivamogga from Navi Mumbai.
International operations have another challenge – that of bilateral rights or rather the lack of it. With Indian rights to Indonesia on the verge of being full and likewise for Vietnam, there is limited deployment that can happen for IndiGo.
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