How are the Indian airlines preparing for peak season?

The monsoon is traditionally a lean season, but on the other side are the festivals which are lined up one after another. As we head into the peak season towards the end of September, it is a good time to look at the continuing evolution of the Indian carriers network building, both domestic and international.

The last five months have been fulls of ups and downs for various carriers, with the pulling out and subsequent addition of capacity by Indigo, the challenges at Vistara which is going to serve its original intended schedule only in the month of September, the continued expansion of Air India and Air India express, the network optimisation at Akasa Air which has moved some capacity from domestic to International and the tactical increase and reduction of capacity by SpiceJet. The last five months have also seen significant expansion or announcement of medium to long haul international capacity from Air India – addition of Zurich, Kuala Lumpur, Ho Chi Minh City to the network and augmenting of capacity to Dhaka, Toronto, London and Phuket & the continued expansion to the Middle East (in particular Dammam and Abu Dhabi) from Indigo, Air India express and new entrant Akasa. In addition, Air India express has picked up some gulf destinations from Air India like Kuwait, Bahrain and Muscat.

With all these changes, let’s look at the top domestic bases of the top 6 Indian carriers (Indigo, Air India, Vistara, Air India express (IX & I5), Akasa and SpiceJet. All calculations that follow are data as of August 1 for the last week of September.

Top 20 domestic airports by daily departures

Bengaluru dethrones Mumbai: The first change is right at the top where Bengaluru airport has dethroned Mumbai airport in September by way of daily domestic departures. While Mumbai still has an edge on seats on offer (given the over 30+ ATR sized departures at Bengaluru), I believe that by November, Bengaluru can move to the #2 spot by way of seats and passengers in domestic. Given that Mumbai cannot expand further, Bengaluru will be a bigger airport for domestic traffic.

Bengaluru has seen significant expansion by both Indigo (up to 190 departures daily) and the Air India group, in particular the full service carriers Vistara and Air India which now have a slightly higher departure count compared to the low cost Air India Express. Bengaluru is the stated third hub of the Air India group and in line with that, there has been capacity addition by the group carriers.

Muted growth at the top: Delhi and Mumbai have seen muted capacity growth – in both airports, Vistara had withdrawn flights and frequencies in summer which are targeted to be restored by September. In addition, there has been an increase of frequencies to Goa – MOPA and Hyderabad (coincidentally both GMR airports) while Akasa Air has started Gorakhpur services as well from Delhi. Air India Express maintains a very small presence at Mumbai (11 departures) and a steady presence of 37 departures at Delhi.

Varanasi: The next eye catching development is the growth in departures at Varanasi which has climbed up 2 places from Number 20 to 18 with almost 18% growth in departures, primarily led by Air India Express adding capacity

Hyderabad: Hyderabad has seen the second fastest growth amongst the big airports with Air India Express in particular expanding operations. Air India Express has also expanded departures at Kolkata and Chennai airports and seems to be deepening the Air India group presence at these 3 airports (HYD, MAA and CCU) which will remain big focus cities for the Air India group. Chennai has however seen an overall shrinking of departures driven by the partial withdrawal of SpiceJet and the end of the temporary Air India A350 training flights

Guwahati and Srinagar have both seen a steady accretion of departures with Air India group adding capacity at Srinagar and Indigo and Air India Express adding departures at Guwahati

Top 15 International airports by daily departures by Indian carriers

Delhi remains the undisputed hub of International travel in India with the Air India group in particular growing its network width and capacity at Delhi. Indigo has seen success with its Central Asia expansion (moving all destinations to daily) while the destination that has seen the maximum capacity growth is Phuket with additional daily flights by Indigo, Air India and Spicejet. London will see a boost in capacity from August with the use of 777 and A350 aircraft by Air India.

Mumbai remains the king of the jungle by way of Middle East departures with more capacity from Indigo, Air India Express and Akasa which has quietly built a formidable bank of almost 6 daily departures to the gulf from Mumbai.

Chennai Returns: The big change is the return of Chennai to the #3 spot (amongst Indian carrier departures) with additional Indigo and Air India Express departures boosting this airport that has otherwise seen a challenge in terms of cuts by both domestic and international carriers

Hyderabad remains the 3^rd biggest city for international departures for Indigo and it will be interesting to see if they attempt to build out a hub for domestic to international in the south at Hyderabad given the naturally high traffic flows to the gulf from there. Likewise, it will be interesting to watch the growth of the Air India group network at Bengaluru given their stated intent of making this the third hub, with addition of flights to London Gatwick and Abu Dhabi.

Coastal airports: Malabar area airports (CCJ, COK, TRV, CNN and IXE) maintain a steady presence in the top 12 airports given their strong volume of origin-destination traffic to the gulf. Given that gulf rights are likely saturated, it will be interesting to see the next phase of evolution of traffic on these airports with international carriers testing waters with south east Asia flying as well.

The race at the lower half of the table is getting interesting with Indigo for instance adding departures at Coimbatore and rumoured expansion plans of Air India Express and others at airports like Surat and Madurai.

The onset of the winter schedule will bring more changes and more flights. The trend for now appears to be of Air India group consolidating its presence at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru for the full service carriers and Air India Express expanding at Kolkata, Chennai and Hyderabad, while Indigo continues apace with its expansion of services with new city pairs and growing tier 2 India international services. Akasa Air has built a nice niche of Mumbai to Gulf and it will be interesting to see its further expansion of frequency and capacity.

About the author: This guest contributor is an aviation enthusiast whose day job is in consumer goods. A frequent flyer (1300 + flights logged) and a data geek with a love for analysing airline networks and their evolution. On X (Formerly Twitter) and other platforms as @BOMLHR

Special Note

There is now an option to pay for a coffee to thank Network Thoughts for the effort that is put into the research needed to present these posts. The site will continue to be free. If you have learnt from Network Thoughts and want to pay a fair price for the content, you can pay via UPI (Other modes coming soon) or purchase Network Thoughts baggage tags. You can now order Network Thoughts baggage tags !

Follow NetworkThoughts on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.