IndiGo – the country’s largest carrier has opened reservations for flights to Bangkok from Pune. This comes after an announcement on social media by Hon. Minister of State for Civil Aviation Sh. Muralidhar Mohol, also the Member of Parliament from Pune where daily flights to Dubai and thrice a week service to Bangkok was announced. The flight will be operational from November 22, 2024 and not Oct 27, 2024 as was announced earlier.
IndiGo, which operates over 2000 flights a day, did not have a single international flight from Pune. It currently operates international services from 19 Indian destinations to 35 international destinations. Pune will be the 20th Indian city from where it will offer International services. IndiGo currently has 56% of all departures from Pune and 61% of all seats available.
This thrice weekly service will have limited feeder opportunities. The timings, frequency and airport infrastructure does not support feeder traffic in true sense. Pune Airport, soon to be renamed Jagat Guru Sant Tukaram Maharaj Airport, is a civilian enclave at a defence airfield handling frontline Sukhoi-30MKI aircraft. A new terminal building has been operationalised but all flights have not yet shifted to the new one. A new airport for Pune has been in the pipeline for decades and after repeated changes in site and approvals has not had any breakthrough.
Timings
The airline will deploy the A320 family aircraft on this route and will depart Pune at 2310 hours local time on Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays and reach Bangkok – Suvarnabhumi at 0445 hours local time, the next day. The return flight is scheduled to depart Bangkok at 0115 hours and reach Pune at 0415 hours on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
Pune to Bangkok
Will the route be lucky this time around? SpiceJet has tried the Pune – Bangkok route in the past but was short lived, having pulled out in March 2014 having started in October 2013. The airline announced the route again in 2022, but was a non-starter of sorts. With IndiGo, there is renewed hope to make it work.
The traffic from Pune relies on flights from Mumbai along with flying to Delhi or Bengaluru for international flights in absence of direct flights. The airport became international in 2005 with flights to Dubai and Singapore (via Hyderabad). It got its fame with Lufthansa operating to Frankfurt, but the demise of Privat Air led to Lufthansa pulling out this connection.
Visa free travel or visa on arrival at Bangkok could see passengers trying to self connect at Bangkok, but they may be far and few and the focus would largely be on holiday travel.
Network Thoughts
For most non-metro cities, there is just one need – a flight each to the east and the west with codeshare options beyond. For Pune, this was possible with Jet Airways flying to Abu Dhabi and beyond with Etihad and to Singapore and beyond with Jetstar / Qantas. IndiGo’s flight to Bangkok will largely cater to O-D (Origin – Destination) travel and not traffic to China / North America / Australia, etc. Would it have been wise to have a flight to Kuala Lumpur and connect to partner Malaysia Airlines?
With announcements for Dubai and Bangkok being done together, the flight to Dubai is still a mystery.
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