IndiGo, India’s largest carrier by fleet and market share, has opened reservations for flights to Madinah, Saudi arabia. Flights are open for sale from February 20, 2025 and will be 38th international station as per the airline.
Flights open for sale are as below,
6E57 HYD1935 – 2345MED
6E58 MED0045 – 0810HYD
Flights from Hyderabad operate on Mondays, Thursdays and Saturdays; while departure from Madinah is on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays.
Want to learn how airline network planning works? Click to know more and attend a 2.5 hour session.
This will be IndiGo’s fourth destination in Saudi Arabia, where it already operates to Jeddah, Dammam and Riyadh. Dammam is connected to Lucknow, Hyderabad, Delhi, Kozhikode, Mumbai; Jeddah to Hyderabad, Delhi, Kozhikode, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru while Riyadh is connected to Hyderabad, Delhi and Mumbai. Thus Hyderabad will be the only station to be connected to all four points IndiGo serves in Saudi Arabia. Prince Mohammad bin Abdulaziz International Airport (IATA: MED) serves the holy city of Madinah in Saudi Arabia. It is one of the holiest cities is Islam and a pilgrimage city part of the Hajj and Umrah. Madinah thus attracts millions of people each year and more so during the Hajj period.
This marks the fifth of the seven international destinations which IndiGo had said it would launch by March 2025. With the Q3-FY25 results due anytime now, the formal announcement of the rest could well be round the corner. The airline has already launched flights to Jaffna, Mauritius, Penang and Langkawi.
Network Thoughts
Like all other routes, the question of “Why Hyderabad?” remains dominant and the answer in this case is straight and simple – “Demographics”. The next question that comes up is “Will IndiGo try to connect points in ASEAN to Madinah, via Hyderabad?” Traffic from Malaysia and Indonesia can well be funnelled via Hyderabad to Madinah in future. While Malaysia is a relatively easy one due to bilateral rights being available, Batik Air and Malaysia Airlines already operate to Madinah from Kuala Lumpur. Saudia and Garuda Indonesia connect Madinah with Jakarta, but there are many points beyond Jakarta, within Indonesia, which could be on the radar to provide this connection. The challenge will be bilateral rights to Indonesia.
Read: How IndiGo plans its network?
Found this article informative? Think of supporting Network Thoughts with Power of 10
Running this website incurs some cost, along with the data sourced for analytics. If you have liked this article, consider paying INR 10 via UPI. The site will continue to be free. This will help with the maintenance, upkeep and funding the research.
You can also pay via Debit or Credit card by clicking on this link.
You can support Network Thoughts by ordering Network Thoughts baggage tags !
Follow NetworkThoughts on X (Formerly Twitter), Bsky, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.