Everytime I post about the footfalls of top 10 airports in India, I see the post get thousands of views and comments which range from a combination of pride, sarcasm and anger. These comments are largely from the three southern airports – Bengaluru, Kochi and Chennai.
The data for April was no different, when Kolkata overtook Chennai in total footfalls.
I have read arguments which talk about privatisation, greenfield airports, yields, capacity, terminal infrastructure and more. Having been a network planner myself, I can vouch that there is no one single point which decides a route or frequency. Also, while private airports chase airlines actively and offer some incentives, these are not permanent and when a route sustains longer – it means it is without incentives. In the end, only good traffic and good yields is what keeps the route going.
What does the seats on offer say?
The quartet of Chennai, Kochi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad form the main airports and international gateways in south India, with the first three locked neck to neck in a battle for more passengers.
Passengers often follow available seats and how do the seats and frequencies stand? Chennai offers maximum weekly seats, with 68,397 across 346 frequencies. Next is Bengaluru with 60,120 weekly seats across 255 frequencies. Kochi is third with 309 frequencies, which is more than Bengaluru but 59,661 weekly seats – very close to Bengaluru. This is because Kochi is dominated by narrowbody traffic while Bengaluru attracts quite a bit of widebody international services, including the A380 by Emirates. Hyderabad, sees 55,416 seats across 264 frequencies (frequency more than Bengaluru).
The seats per departure are highest at Bengaluru at 236, followed by Hyderabad – 210; Chennai – 198 and Kochi – 193.
Chennai – Heavy ASEAN and GCC mix, all round connectivity at Bengaluru
Chennai – the de facto metro in the south for ages has been on the decline in terms of air traffic for a while now. As it stands today, it is connected to 21 unique destinations by 31 airlines. Out of its 346 weekly frequencies on international routes, 142 are to the GCC region or the Middle East, this is followed by 109 flights to the ASEAN region. The services are largely driven by Narrowbody aircraft with 270 frequencies being operated by A320 / B737 family while only 67 weekly frequencies are by Widebody aircraft. Chennai has 12 flights a week to Europe, four to Africa and three to other points in Asia.
Kochi is even more closely linked with the Middle East, with 238 out of 309 weekly international frequencies being to the Middle east and 48 to ASEAN and only three to Europe (Air India’s 3x weekly to London Gatwick).
Bengaluru on the other hand, has 88 and 85 flights each to the Middle East and ASEAN respectively, with 35 to Europe, seven to Asia. Bengaluru is connected to 27 destinations by 30 airlines.
What is driving traffic?
Over the years, Bengaluru has come up with a lot of IT engineers making it their base. This has led to hyper salary hikes, migration and travel to client sites or visit by clients in the IT industry. Chennai on the other hand has grown but not as much as Bengaluru with a lot of business activity being on the manufacturing side and not services.
I have been following this battle for a while and there are more data points beyond just seats on offer. A look at the hotel industry’s numbers like Average Room Rate (ARR), RevPAR (Revenue Per Available Room), ADR (Average Daily Rate) and Occupancy Rate has consistently been higher for Bengaluru over Chennai. This is restricted to a few hotels, especially star hotels which are listed and make this data public, hence not exhaustive but indicative.
However, these data points do indicate that the business activity overall in Bengaluru is much higher than Chennai and possibly a higher disposable income leading to more trips per person than Chennai.
How long for Bengaluru to push Chennai?
All indications are that the rankings would move over the next few years, but not immediate. One gets more insights when numbers are looked at a granular level.
On a daily basis, Bengaluru is 1182 seats short of Chennai. At its average per flight occupancy, Bengaluru is 5 international flights per day away from offering the same number of seats as Chennai. With Kochi, where it is neck to neck – Bengaluru offers only 66 more seats per day than Kochi and a flight more either at Kochi or Bengaluru can tilt the balance in favour. Additionally, the load factors for short haul international to GCC have been traditionally higher than long haul and thus Kochi has narrowly maintained the lead in most months.
By the end of this year, there are all indications that Bengaluru will be undisputed number four (from current five) as it has additional seats lined up including that of Qantas from Sydney. How soon will it push Chennai? It is anybody’s guess and a lot is dependent on how the market plays out.
If news reports are to be believed, Air India Express plans to add flights to Dhaka from Chennai. IndiGo had double daily departures to Kuala Lumpur pre-COVID. It currently has just one. Such additions could give Chennai – the lead, as compared to Bengaluru – which is being established as the third hub for Air India but it remains unclear on when the airline will start a rapid international expansion.
All data analysis is done by data provided by Cirium – an aviation analytics company.
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such a delight to read such insightful analyses. Great work again.