We are days away from the start of the Winter season and for aviation fans, a new season brings new routes and connections and also a chance to peek into the minds of network planners. While airlines frequently change their routes and flights all through the year, new slots and consequently new routes are made available at the beginning of the IATA winter season (typically last week of October) and the corresponding summer season (last week of March). The DGCA also publishes all filed route plans for the season for domestic and international carriers – and while these are not religiously adhered to (airlines respond dynamically to changing demand plus there could be changes necessitated by availability of planes, crew etc), the aviation geek community eagerly awaits these schedules (published on the DGCA site in the last week of October and March respectively) to understand what is happening in the market.
This author doesn’t use the DGCA published schedules – rather this blog looks at actual flights available for sale on booking engines periodically to understand the underlying demand currents in the domestic and international market (from an Indian airline’s perspective) and get an insight into the pushes and pulls in the industry. The data for this series is accurate as of mid October for sales in the last week of November/early December (with Friday 29th November as a median date).
Winter 24 promises to be extremely exciting for the followers of Indian aviation with the Air India-Vistara merger forthcoming on Nov 12, the launch of business class and loyalty by Indigo and the revival with fresh funding of Spicejet. Indian carriers continue to expand their fleet, with Indigo, Akasa and Air India Express expected to take in new planes and further the announced shifting of some planes (total 20 aircraft per press reports) from Air India to Air India Express. This winter will also be interesting as a prelude to an exciting summer 25 season when we will have 2 new greenfield airports in the 2 biggest markets in India with Navi Mumbai and Jewar expected to start and it will be interesting to see how airlines deploy incremental capacity this winter while they await these 2 airports coming on stream.
For November 24, in the top 20 cities, the top 5 Indian carriers – Indigo, Air India (incl Vistara), Air India express, Akasa and Spicejet have put on sale 2454 daily departures compared to 2355 in May (in the summer schedule), with Indigo adding 78 of the 100 incremental departures. This is a healthy sequential growth of close to 5% in total departures in a context where capacity additions have been muted with the various supply chain challenges and not too many grounded aircraft have yet returned to service.
Indigo continues to add frequencies across airports (barring Mumbai where there is very limited scope to add departures) with big jumps between May and November at Hyderabad (23 additional departures), Chennai (15) & Goa Dabolim (9) which in turn propels these airports to the top of the growth charts along with Varanasi. Indigo has also focused on international additions with 14 incremental daily departures (16% growth) from the top 8 metros alone. With Indigo inducting new A321 aircraft with their “Stretch” product for use on metro routes starting mid November plus their continued push on international capacity, it will be interesting to see the pace of growth on domestic markets.
Air India/Vistara for now have made minimal changes to their domestic schedule for November from that in operation in May or September and hence we will have to wait to see how the merged network looks like and also the role and routes of the full service carrier vs that of the low cost arm. That said, Air India looks to be focusing on its stated 3 hubs of Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru and Air India Express in turn complimenting that with additions at Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai. Air India Express for now has focused on connecting its various international nodes to these 3 metros and not significantly added any new domestic destination but that is starting to change with the addition of cities like Agartala (in summer schedule) and Bhopal (expected in December per press reports) in its network. Both Air India and Express continue to grow their international footprint with the group adding 8 incremental daily departures over May from the top 8 metros and some routes in the Middle East moving from full service to low cost.
Akasa keeps optimising its schedule, trying to find the right profitable match for its incoming capacity. It also spread its wings internationally out of Mumbai and Ahmedabad to the Middle East with close to 6 daily departures. Spicejet has been in a holding position for some time and has withdrawn from most international markets barring the lucrative Dubai routes it has and we will watch its network rejuvenation closely.
From a top route perspective, given the relatively lean additions at Delhi and Mumbai where the top routes are concentrated, there has been little fluctuation. Delhi to Hyderabad and Bangalore to Hyderabad continue to see jumps in incremental capacity while Mumbai to Bangalore has seen small drops in capacity. Delhi to Srinagar drops out of the top 10 routes for Winter but just like Goa is no longer a seasonal winter destination and sees traffic year round, Srinagar has also become relatively less seasonal and retains connectivity year round.
In the next few blogs, we will break down the top 10 and the next 20 markets in domestic aviation, talking of key trends in both. Finally we will take a look at the international route network of Indian carriers from an Indian node perspective. Stay tuned
The author who has a day job in consumer goods, is a self-confessed aviation geek with an abiding interest in airline network evolution. A frequent flyer with a passion for travel, free time is spent gathering information on new flights and routes. You can reach him at @BOMLHR on X, Skyscraper city amongst other platforms.