The Indian domestic aviation sees over 3,000 flights on a daily basis, with about 70% of them departing from one of the six metro airports. India is a vast and diverse country with divisions into states and Union Territories. Interestingly, the largest airport in the country – Delhi, is the only airport in the state and even as Hindon is operational and Noida International Airport becomes operational, the two would be in Uttar Pradesh.
I relied on data received from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article to analyse the top five states in India by intra state connectivity.
- Tamil Nadu leads
The southern state of Tamil Nadu is a winner with 490 weekly flights, offering little over 55,000 weekly seats. Chennai, the state capital, is connected to Coimbatore, Madurai, Trichy, Salem and Tuticorin. Flights to Coimbatore and Madurai from Chennai work like shuttle services in terms of frequencies.
- Karnataka
Bengaluru airport has climbed the ranking steps very fast in the last few years with 233 weekly flights and 27,979 seats within Karnataka. The last few years have seen the air map within Karnataka expand beyond Bengaluru and Mangalore with steady services to Hubli, Belgaum, Vidyanagar, Mysore amongst others.
- Maharashtra
The western state comes in third with 204 weekly flights and 32,538 seats within Maharashtra. While Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have all connections from Chennai and Bengaluru respectively, Maharashtra stands out with connectivity beyond Mumbai. There are flights between Pune – Nagpur, Jalgaon – Pune, Nanded – Pune and Pune – Sindhudurg, making it unique as compared to the top two states.
- West Bengal
Fourth position goes to West Bengal which has 99 weekly flights connecting airports within the state offering 14,043 seats. This is largely driven by the flights to Bagdogra from Kolkata, with 84 out of 99 being between Kolkata and Bagdogra.
- Odisha and Andhra Pradesh
In terms of frequencies, Odisha triumphs Andhra Pradesh with 73 flights within Odisha, per week compared to 67 within Andhra Pradesh. However, there are more seats within Andhra Pradesh (6560 weekly) compared to 1877 in Odisha. In the case of Odisha, the state has come up with a scheme on the lines of RCS-UDAN to help connect airports within the state. Not that long ago, only one airport in Odisha (Bhubaneshwar) was on the airmap. This is a case study which can be replicated across states. IndiaOne Air, which operates the Cessna’s to operate these routes also needs to be lauded for their efforts.
Which other states have good connectivity within the state?
Assam and Gujarat have good intra state connectivity after these five states. The flights within Assam cater to the Cat 2A ASKs (Available Seat kilometers) required under Route Dispersal Guidelines (RDG).
Network Thoughts
For a regional carrier, expanding thin is always a problem since there are fewer planes, and the costs hit the roof. The other challenge is availability of airports for a specified time due to these being without modern navigational aids limiting the availability from sunrise to sunset in most cases.
The intra state connectivity is also a sign of financial performance of a state and not population alone. Uttar Pradesh is the most populous state and also has more airports in operation than any other state but it has very limited intra state connectivity.
As slots become available at Navi Mumbai airport, there could be potential for more flights within Maharashtra from Mumai / Navi Mumbai and a similar practice may follow at Hindon or Noida International airport.
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Dear Mr. Ameya Joshi ji,
Just to share about your above article , my state Gujarat has the highest number of airports and airfields viz. Amreli, Ankeslhwar ,Ahmedabad, Bhavnagar, Bhuj , Diu (though union territory but adjoining my state ) Mundra , Jamnagar , Keshod , Kandla , Mehsana , Porbandar , Rajkot ( my city with one closed and one operational international airport ) , Surat and upcoming near Morbi and Dholera.
But except very few of them , hardly there is any inter state flight connection , even under RCS
There is huge potential for small airlines with just 20 seats to cater to this region by making Rajkot as a hub and then stage wise connecting to all above routes , because now that the closed domestic airport in the city is idle but could be ideally suited for the air taxi , helicopter operations and RCS .
Hope my views can be further given due guidance from your end and if possible could lead to potential players in this field.
Raju Thaker Project StarWest ( Airlines and Aviation Research ) B-304 , Dharmdarshan, 10 , Bhaktinagar Society Rajkot – 360 002 E – rajuthaker14@gmail.com