IndiGo announced its flights to Amsterdam and Manchester on May 21, 2025 along with its stellar Q4-FY25 results. While it had announced the destinations in March, there has been a small change in its plan, with the origin being Mumbai instead of Delhi. The change looks largely due to the Pakistani Airspace closure, an event which happened post its March announcement.
An airline plans its networks and new flights based on a lot of data and when it does so it also has a backup plan in place. As IndiGo markets its rebook feature as Plan B, I have borrowed the same name to see if IndiGo caters to the same connections from Mumbai, which it would have from Delhi.
Minimum Connection Time
The core for any connection is the MCT (Minimum Connection Time). This is published by the airport and airlines can add (and in some cases subtract) to this time to ensure that they sell connecting flights in a manner that ensures seamless connections and also caters to some delays which creep in at times.
With the MCT for Mumbai not in public domain, I relied on Air India’s MCT (from their website) and used the same for IndIGo. This would be 90 mins as MCT (Minimum Connection Time) for Domestic to International and 120 mins as MCT for International to Domestic. Additionally, the International to International MCT will be 75 minutes.
These connections are assuming that flights are operating from a single terminal, T2 in case of Mumbai where IndiGo either moves these connecting flights or T2 being the only terminal in operation at Mumbai, later this year, as T1 goes for reconstruction.
Credits for the data goes exclusively to Cirium, an aviation analytics company, which provided data for this post. I have tried to analyse Amsterdam and Manchester to Mumbai and beyond And from India to Amsterdam and Manchester via Mumbai
The 0 – 4 hour window for connections (beyond MCT) shows two way connections to Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Lucknow, Indore, Nagpur, Raipur. There are good one way connections from or to Coimbatore, Srinagar, Jammu, Vadodara, Varanasi amongst others.
Delhi v/s Mumbai
The biggest missing link seems to be Amritsar which tends to have traffic to Manchester due to diaspora connections. What really then changes for IndiGo with the move to Mumbai? Apart from the connectivity at Delhi which IndiGo has, it had the added advantage of road connectivity to points in Punjab which has VFR (Visiting Friends and Relatives) traffic to the UK in general and Manchester in particular. These passengers will now have to rely on flights to Mumbai if they have to fly IndiGo and on the other hand, IndiGo will have to price these connections in a competitive manner. There is reason to believe that IndiGo will add a flight to Amritsar to improve the MCT and offer good two way connections.
It remains unclear if these would have been the timings from Delhi, but if we assume so then it also makes an interesting study to see what connections would have been possible from Delhi? Prima facie it turns out that the airline would have made all these domestic connections from Delhi as well with very limited additional connections. These additional connections to the hills with the ATRs or early morning departures to holiday destinations may not be the most prime connections an airline would look at early in the route cycle.
The additional points would have been Guwahati, Ranchi, Pune, Surat amongst others. On the international side, there weren’t going to be good connections to Bangkok or Singapore at current timings from Delhi as well. These, however, are based on assumptions of timings being the same from Delhi. Currently, Krabi is the only point which is connected two-way by IndiGo, via Mumbai, to Amsterdam and Manchester.
Longer term edge of Mumbai?
The Navi Mumbai airport has been delayed from its initial start date. It remains unclear on when the operations will start. Mumbai airports plan to move its freighter operations to Navi Mumbai has been put on hold. In the battle of Delhi v/s Mumbai, Delhi metropolitan area will always have more passengers to offer than Mumbai, but Delhi airport has one challenge and that is multiple terminals without seamless connectivity. Can Mumbai Airport help IndiGo consolidate in return for a good functional hub? After the demise of Jet Airways, there is no carrier which has a hub at Mumbai and the airport can go the extra length to attract IndiGo.
What do you think about the shift to Mumbai and the connections?
Updates
Within hours of publishing this post, keen schedule watcher and fellow contributor to Network Thoughts saw the addition of flights to Bangkok and Phuket from Mumbai along with re-timing of flights.
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