More flights this summer as domestic airlines add planes

The country's top airports will witness about 8% growth in daily departures with airlines adding flights in summer.

Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports which handle over 50% of air traffic handled 1,114 departures daily in winter schedule and the figure is expected to go up to 1,203 departures in summer owing to proposed increase in domestic and international flights.

Directorate General of Civil Aviation approves the schedules of both domestic and foreign airlines and summer schedule will come into effect from next week. The regulator however is yet to announce the approved schedules.

Domestic traffic grew 9.7% in 2014 over previous year and January saw a growth of 21% in domestic traffic fuelled by discount offers.

IndiGo which is the largest domestic airline by market share is introducing a flight between Kolkata-Dimapur and additional flights from Delhi to Kolkata, Varanasi and Indore and flights between Mumbai-Indore and Mumbai-Raipur.

Jet Airways is enhancing its flights from Mumbai and Delhi including new services on routes being operated by Vistara. These include flights from Delhi to Guwahati, Pune and Hyderabad amongst others.

GoAir said it is adding 8 flights in summer. SpiceJet which has cut its schedule to about 210 daily flights expects to increase flights to 280 with the airline planning to induct additional planes.

IndiGo which has 93 planes is expecting three Airbus A320s over next few months while Air India is taking four Airbus A320 and 3 Boeing 787 planes. AirAsia and Vistara too will be adding capacity.

“While most of the domestic carriers have plans to increase frequencies on various domestic routes, Vistara has submitted their plan for pan India operations.

The airline is also planning to introduce flight to north eastern airports as well as few metro airports in Southern and Western India. Similarly Air Asia India will introduce their maiden flights out of Delhi and plans to fly to non-metro stations.

These two airline will be the major contributor of routes expansion out of Delhi,” a Delhi airport spokesperson said.
Bengaluru will have a new service to Kuwait being operated by Kuwait Airways and a new domestic flight to Jodhpur. Vistara and Air Pegasus, which has received nod from DGCA, will commence service to Bengaluru, a spokesperson said.

“Growth in air traffic has encouraged the airlines to increase capacity and almost all carriers are planning increase in frequencies in summer,” said S G Kishore, CEO of Hyderabad airport.