Every month when the top airports data is released, there is a fair bit of discussion on why certain airports are doing well and why a handful of them are not. Over the years, I have noticed a few changes to airline networks and strategies. One of them is taking care of seasonality while the other is having a focus city, a concept very popular in the western world but restricted in India. I thus went around checking the top 5 airports by seats deployed for the top 5 airlines in India, which make up almost the entire market. These airlines are IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air, SpiceJet.
There are interesting findings, with IndiGo and Air India having presence at the top 5 airports which align with the national rankings or these airports making it to top 5 country wide because of large presence of these two airlines. Data for this analysis is for August and obtained from Cirium, an aviation analytics comapny.
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IndiGo
The largest airline in the country has its largest presence at Delhi, the largest airport in the country. IndiGo is also the largest carrier at Delhi by seats on offer. This is followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru with both being neck to neck. Bengaluru is only 502 seats per day away from Mumbai for IndiGo. As a single airport, Bengaluru will overtake Mumbai when Navi Mumbai opens, though IndiGo is likely to have more presence at the two airports combined at Mumbai.
Air India
Air India has similar top 5 as IndiGo. However, it has disproportional high presence at Delhi, followed by Mumbai with the other three airports having much smaller presence.
Air India Express
The fully owned low cost subsidiary of Air India has its largest presence at Bengaluru, followed by Delhi and Hyderabad. Bengaluru was the hub for AirAsia India which merged with Air India Express. The fourth and fifth airport for Air India Express are Kolkata and Guwahati, with even Mumbai being out of top 5
Akasa Air
Akasa Air is new but has built a network around challenges like slots at major airports. It continues to have Bengaluru as its largest airport but Mumbai, where it selectively managed to get slots has been neck to neck. Interestingly, Ahmedabad and Pune are part of its top five airports and not Hyderabad, Chennai or Kolkata.
While most major airports in India are slot constrained, some are more constrained than others and Akasa Air has done commendable work by focusing on Pune.
SpiceJet
SpiceJet has lost a lot of market share from where it was a decade ago. However, it continues to have a split of operations with Delhi being the largest hub, followed by Mumbai. Its top five airports consist of Patna along with Pune and Kolkata which see same seat count on offer but does not see Chennai, its one time hub and Hyderabad in the list.
Comparison
When all the unique airports are addded and compared, the chart below explains how strong IndiGo is and how Air India and Air India Express playing with their capacity based on the market dynamics.
Where will this move from here on? Type in your thoughts in comments
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