Air India Express – the subsidiary of Air India announced the launch of services to Agartala starting September 01, 2024. This will be the 46th destination for Air India Express. The airline will connect Agartala with a daily flight each from Kolkata and Guwahati, with the Guwahati – Agartala flight being an extension of Delhi – Guwahati offering the same aircraft one-stop flight between Delhi and Agartala.
| From | To | Departure Time | Arrival Time |
| Agartala | Guwahati | 11:50 | 12:45 |
| Guwahati | Agartala | 10:20 | 11:20 |
| Agartala | Kolkata | 09:20 | 10:25 |
| Kolkata | Agartala | 07:50 | 08:50 |
Flights operate Daily with the Kolkata – Agartala leg being operated by the MAX 8 offering Business Class and the Guwahati – Agartala operated by all economy 737NG going by the booking engine data.
I have tracked Agartala closely and developed special interest because of how IndiGo played the market. Markets like Agartala or Coimbatore offer great learning opportunities to an aviation analyst.
The Agartala market
Maharaja Bir Bikram Airport serves Agartala, the capital of Tripura. The airport has a new terminal and additional bays making it a non congested airport. The airport boundary wall almost borders the India – Bangladesh international border. Agartala is the second busiest airport in the North East. A Bangladeshi news report from 2019 talks about India asking for land on lease in Bangladesh to expand the airport. Bangladeshi nationals travel to Agartala and fly to Chennai for medical tourism.
Tripura’s economy is largely agrarian and the air transport market is a mix of government traffic, students, businessmen and a lot of cargo. Currently, Agartala is totally dominated by IndiGo with six daily departures, while Air India has two. IndiGo also serves non-stop from Bengaluru and Delhi, both being monopoly routes. There also is an upcoming market where locals migrate to the GCC for employment and connect via Delhi or Kolkata.
If my memory serves me right
Agartala was launched by IndiGo in 2007 and was the 14th destination for the airline, connecting it with Kolkata. By 2009, when Kingfisher, Jet Airways and Indian Airlines were in the market, IndiGo was adding a frequency. Kingfisher operated the ATR to Agartala from Kolkata and offered connections; while IndiGo played the game of one-stops with the same aircraft service. At the end of 2012, when Kingfisher was no more in operations and Indian Airlines was Air India – SpiceJet had entered the fray but IndiGo continued adding frequency, trying to be one up than the nearest competitor. For a brief period, it started with Kolkata – Agartala – Imphal – Kolkata on four days and Kolkata – Imphal – Agartala – Kolkata on other three days. In 2015, IndiGo had cornered over 50% of the frequencies from Agartala.
It had become a three party battle with Air India happy with the Kolkata hub flights, attracting government and LTC traffic as mandated by law, while IndiGo and SpiceJet battled it out with fares. SpiceJet was bruised with the 2014 near death experience and fighting on fares was a challenge for the airline. IndiGo pushed for lower and lower fares on the Kolkata – Agartala route, while offering a Bengaluru – Agartala non-stop making a mark and name in the Agartala market. Sometime in 2018, SpiceJet gave up and the market was all for IndiGo and Air India. Air India continued its modest offering with A319s, but IndiGo was offering 6 flights a day on a few days, and five on others to Kolkata alone from Agartala.
The sudden disappearance of SpiceJet led to an increase in fares and so much so that the Chief Minister himself talked about it in the media and pressed the Central government to look at the fares. The high fares seemed attractive for AirAsia India, which entered the fray with low fares, 13x weekly from Kolkata and also flights to Guwahati and Imphal. The airline started operations towards the end of October 2019, and never returned to Agartala post COVID. The fare war had set in and the extremely high fares had made its way for exactly the opposite – making a newcomer difficult to sustain.
Damn if you do, Damn if you don’t
No market can handle a sudden spike in growth. Even a market like Mumbai – Delhi, which often makes it to the top 10 worldwide will not be able to handle an overnight spike in capacity by 40% or 60%. This will create pressure on yields since demand does not grow overnight. Demand is a mix of stimulation which happens by dropping prices and a growth in economy and route profile over a steady course of time.
Air India Express is entering the hyper competitive Kolkata – Agartala market with just 1 frequency, though there are all indications that it will add frequency and Air India might withdraw its 2x daily flight in line with how Air India Express has been taking over some routes of Air India. IndiGo is increasing its frequency to 7x daily, from 6x daily. The combined might will be 3 frequencies for the Tata group (30%) and 7 (70%) for IndiGo, a far better ratio than what it was when AirAsia India entered the market. The era of high air fares for the route has also come to an end right now, so the shock would be lesser.
Network Thoughts
I would assume that Agartala as a station would shift to Air India Express from Air India. Even as competition came and went, Air India continued on the Kolkata – Agartala route, largely as a government entity. However, now as a private player – it may not be a route which warrants a full service carrier and the cost base would warrant its low cost arm to take on the might of the market leader.
Air India Express is selectively developing Chennai and Kolkata with additions over the last few months. Over the next few months, a clearer picture would emerge on how Air India is allotting routes to the low cost subsidiary. By then, Vistara would cease to exist and so would AIX Connect (erstwhile AirAsia India) and there would be two arms, one FSC and another LCC. Will they be present in the same market? My take – unlikely. They will be present at the same station, but at a route level – the airlines are likely to have segregation. For a passenger, it may matter but for the airline, it will actually not since the internal codeshare allows Air India to sell all flights of all Tata group airlines as Air India and pick up the passenger from any point in the combined network and take him or her to any point seven seas across. We will know if Air India Express took a gun, for a battle of tanks or it has sufficient ammo for the route.
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Ameya, One more point to add here- 6E operated between Chennai and Agartala in 2018 with up to a daily frequency. If I recall correctly, it was an early morning departure from Chennai and a mid-morning return back from Agartala.In that year, 71,398 passengers flew on the route with the most in March (8,193). Loads seemed good but by the end of 2018, the frequency was reduced and eventually the route was switched to BLR, albeit initially in a MAA-BLR-IXA one seat-one aircraft journey.
very nice write up