The next 20 – growth beyond the top 10 airports in Indian aviation this winter

In this boom time for Indian aviation with new daily records by way of domestic passengers taking to the skies, let’s take a look beyond the top 10 airports in the country, many of whom have recorded strong growth to understand the dynamics of these next generation markets. A lot of analysis has spoken of the rise of tier 2 cities and these airports are the gateway to those cities and give us an interesting picture of growth beyond the top 8 metros in India. All analysis is based on flights available for sale as of mid October for the last week of November/first week of December with November 29 2024 as the median date.

We have already seen that Goa Dabolim and Jaipur are able to break into the top 10 airports in this country this winter schedule with a surge in connectivity. Let’s look at the next 20 markets ranked in descending order of daily departures – a list full of surprises.

Most of the cities are state capitals or places of commercial interest like Kochi, Indore, Coimbatore and Visakhapatnam. Then there are the holiday and tourism heavy airports of Goa Mopa, Siliguri, Varanasi and the latest entrant in the top 30 list – Sri Vijayapuram (erstwhile Port Blair). Guwahati which is the hub of north east connectivity is the 11^th biggest airport by way of daily departures followed in close succession by Kochi and Lucknow. Srinagar is demonstrating signs of reduced seasonality with almost 37 daily departures in offseason and connectivity across the country and not just Delhi.

Varanasi has seen heavy capacity addition particularly from the south of India with Bangalore Varanasi route in particular seeing heightened competition. Goa Mopa has seen a small but significant reduction in departures with airlines opting to add flights in Goa Dabolim airfield. Airlines have added capacity to the Andaman airport, propelling Sri Vijayapuram airport (port Blair, IXZ) to the top 30 and the airport will get a further boost with its soon to be launched international service to Kuala Lumpur through Air Asia.

Maharashtra has 3 airports in the top 30 (Mumbai, Pune and Nagpur) while a number of states like West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Goa have 2 airports each in the top 30 list. None of the north east airports barring Guwahati make this list and despite its heavy industrialised status, Gujarat has only one airport in the top 30. Kerala has two airports in the top 30 in domestic and as we will see shortly in the next post, 4 in the top 10 on international departures. Interestingly despite the buzz around religious tourism, only Varanasi makes the cut in the top 20 airports.

Indigo dominates these next 20 airports with 8 of them having base departures and only in Bagdogra is the Air India group (through express) able to come close to matching it by way of frequency. These ratings will be dynamic with a single flight addition or cancelation affecting them given how many airports are tightly banded together. The evolution of these airports in some senses mirrors the evolution of the Indian economy and with strong growth in our tier 2 cities, should continue to propel a boom in air services out of these beyond metro airports. Interesting days ahead for sure as many of these airports will be nodes for the fast emerging hubs in the metros for both Indigo and the Air India group.

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.