News reports have started trickling in about the increase in seats between India and Kuwait with a revision of Bilateral Air Services Agreement (BASA), which seems more of a MoU right now. With the government deciding to remove all granular data related to BASA from public domain, and in line with this website’s stated policy of not relying on unpublished or limited circulation data, this post will focus on how the bilateral structure is right now, the split amongst carriers and routes and what next?
There are 47,176 return seats between India and Kuwait each week. This translates to
Roughly 12,000 seats each side per week. News reports have indicated that there has been an increase of 6,000 seats each week each side, taking the total seats to 18,000 and it remains unclear if any additional point of calls were added to the agreement or when the new quota is available for use. Typically, the quota is available from the next season and many times the increase is step wise.
Data for this post has been obtained from Cirium, an aviation analytics company, and is for a typical week in August.
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How are the seats stacked?
There are two airlines from Kuwait which operate to India while three Indian carriers operate to Kuwait. The Kuwait based carriers operate to Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kochi, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai and Trivandrum.
The Indian carriers operate to Kuwait from Ahmedabad, Mumbai, Kochi, Delhi, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kozhikode, Kannur, Mangalore and Trichy.
Indian side
The Indian side deploys 11438 seats to Kuwait, split between three airlines. IndiGo deploys 6300 weekly seats, Air India Express deploys 3836 weekly seats and Akasa Air deploys 1302 weekly seats.
Kuwaiti side
Currently the Kuwaiti side deploys 12,150 between Kuwait and India each week, with two airlines operating – Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways. Kuwait Airways deploys 8844 weekly seats while Jazeera Airways deploys 3306 seats.
The city pairs
The Mumbai – Kuwait sector remains the most dense sector with four operators and over 5,000 weekly seats, followed by Kochi – Kuwait which has over 4,000 weekly seats. Kochi, Trivandrum, Kozhikode and Kannur, all four international airports in Kerala have connectivity to Kuwait.
India – Kuwait trade and relations
India is one of the largest trade partners for Kuwait, mainly due to the import of oil from Kuwait by India. There is a large Indian origin population in Kuwait. India’s exports to Kuwait in FY25 stood at $ 1934.72 million, while India’s imports from Kuwait in FY25 stood at $ 8285.74 million. A lot of Engineering and Construction companies from India have presence in Kuwait. The country is more of a city state with a single civilian airport, which is hub to Kuwait Airways and Jazeera Airways.
Network Thoughts
A seasonal and low yielding traffic is not attractive to carriers. However when the traffic is long term and bulk deals driven, airlines find it attractive. IndiGo did not launch operations to Kuwait until October 2018, while it went international in 2011. However, bilaterals are hard to come by and airlines will pitch in with demands which will far exceed the 6,000 seats which will be newly available. How and when does the government allocate those will be keenly watched. Will there be new points from where Indian carriers will launch flights now that the seats are available or will be it more of the same?
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