Air India recently announced flights to Bhuj from Delhi which begin February 01, 2025. At a time when Air India is transferring flights, all operations at certain stations and planes to subsidiary Air India Express, Bhuj has stood out as one of the few new launches within India. The airline launched flights between Mumbai and Bhuj last March, and is now adding a flight from Delhi, nearly a year after the launch of the station.
The flights will operate as below
AI2479 DEL1500 – 1655BHJ
AI2480 BHJ1730 – 1935DEL
The three-class daily operations complement the Mumbai – Bhuj – Mumbai flights which sees a departure from Mumbai at 0650 hours and arrival in Bhuj at 0805 hours. The return flight leaves Bhuj at 0850 hours and reaches Mumbai at 1010 hours.
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Bhuj airport is serviced by Alliance Air and Star Air with Alliance Air flying from Mumbai with the ATR 72-600 and Star Air flying from Ahmedabad. The airport is a frontline Indian Air Force base with a small civil terminal maintained and operated by the Airports Authority of India while the ATC and runway is controlled by the Indian Air Force. Jet Airways had a strong presence at Bhuj with double daily flights to Mumbai, such that they connected well with their own flights to London and partner flights to other parts of the world. The region has lacked such connectivity since 2019, which Air India will now fulfill.
Passengers from Newark, New York, Chicago, Washington, Toronto, and London connect well with Bhuj both ways. With a little longer connection time, the European points also connect well with Bhuj, though not seamless. The demographics are such that the traffic moves more to the UK and USA than other points in Europe and the new flight ensures two way connectivity to the most “in-demand” sectors. The seriousness of the connection can be gauged from the fact
Shift to Delhi
Post merger of Vistara with Air India, there has been a rapid shift of services to Delhi from Mumbai with Delhi gaining its hub flights, sometimes at the cost of Mumbai. The airline has reduced capacity to Singapore and Bangkok from Mumbai and instead added it from Delhi. Air India is also rejigging its Australian flights and some flights to Frankfurt and Paris to ensure better connectivity.
While Bhuj is already serviced via Mumbai, not many international destinations in the Air India network can be connected via Mumbai alone and hence a flight from Delhi starts making sense. With more than daily operations to points in Canada and USA, along with more destinations in Europe, Delhi offers more choices within the Air India network. The question for any airline to answer is if it can take the passenger from Origin to Destination on its own, because that is typically the biggest revenue making opportunity.
In a game where you are building more spokes to ensure your hub is stronger, it gives an opportunity to reduce dependence on a few spokes and spread it over. The increased capacity also gets support in the form of new connections.
Tail Note
Building connection is a network strategy, which involves having an aircraft available and planning the timings such that maximum connectivity is ensured. The game then shifts to Revenue Management to price the flights and connections in such a manner that it is attractive. In cases like Bhuj, this involves a fine balance of how much premium a passenger will pay for the seamless connection versus the passenger opting for a multi ticketed itinerary to save cost, sometimes not being aware that a delay on the first leg could cost a lot by missing the next connections.
As the group shifts routes with high volumes or IndiGo monopoly to Air India Express, Air India is likely to look for more such opportunities where it has limited presence, is a non-metro, but one which matters in terms of international connections.
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