Aizawl, Surat, Rajahmundry: Traffic from small cities gives IndiGo wings

Smaller markets have seen sharper growth of traffic, reaching almost 80-90 per cent of pre-Covid levels when other metros were still at 75-80 per cent, according to IndiGo CEO Rono Dutta

All dark tunnels usually have a sliver of light, peeking in at unex­pected junctures. It was when the first wave of the pandemic began to ebb that the IndiGo top brass not­iced something: Hitherto sleepy smaller towns and cities had suddenly woken up and were flying in and out of the metros in a manner never witnessed before. Pat­na, Ranchi, Darbhanga, All­ahabad, Gorakhpur, Dibrugarh, Guwahati… name it and many first-time fliers were boarding their aircraft. Even as they wat­ched, metro-to-metro, and espe­cially Mumbai corporate traffic numb­ers, collapsed — Mumbai airport was over­ta­ken by Bengaluru for the first time ever in FY 21 as frequent chan­ges in travel curbs added to the wariness of hesitant fliers.

 
As soon as the team was sure of what it was witnessing, some rearrangements of flights were done. If the airline was flying once from, say, Patna or Ranchi directly to Mumbai or Bengaluru, it grew freque­ncies. It added more direct connections whe­rever it seemed feasible. Demand stro­nger than network level has been reported from Aizawl, Silchar, Bagdogra, Gwalior, Dharamsala, Ajmer, Belagavi, Jharsuguda, Rajah­mun­dry, Dibrugarh, Tuticorin, Surat, Coim­ba­t­ore, and many other such places. Both IndiGo and SpiceJet have noticed this trend.
 
So much so that demand to major metros has been primar­ily from these markets. The top three have been Patna, Guwa­hati and Ranchi. “These markets have seen sharper growth of traffic, reaching almost 80-90 per cent of pre-Covid levels when other metros were still at 75-80 per cent,” says IndiGo CEO Rono Dutta. According to the airline’s estimates, during the pandemic, almost 10-15 per cent were first-time fliers.

 

The IndiGo team also delved deeper into why this may be happening. Three factors quickly became clear.
 
One, just like scheduled flights, the railway network had come to a complete halt. It was slower to come back to life, and train connections, if any, were patchy. This led to an immediate demand for flights for millions who were looking to reach home from the metros, and some reverse traffic, too.
 
Then, once the lockdown ea­sed, several companies in Mumbai, Delhi National Ca­pital Region, Bengaluru, Hyd­er­abad and Chennai wanted to reopen their factories. Many of them flew their workers in from various tier 2 and 3 cities aro­und which the workforce lived. This was evident to IndiGo in the profile of fliers it saw.

 
A third segment — small and medium enterprises and traders — started flying as well as train options vanished over­night. These were people who would typically take a morning train (or even a bus) from, say, Lucknow or Dehradun to Delhi, do their work and return by train (or bus) by evening or the next day.
 
Besides the fact that options shrank was the fear of the virus. Many would rather expose them­selves for a shorter period than risk several hours of exposure on a train — and even on the railway platform. “It’s a matter of perception more than fact but it has worked in the favour of airlines,” says a seasoned IndiGo commander who does many of these routes.

 
It is in this category, the airline feels, some passengers will stick. They have experienced how much time flying can save and can see the clear benefits. Moreover, a small-town businessman is financially quite comfortable and upwardly mobile. “This segment would be happy to take their families by air, too, the next time they go on vacation,” says Sanjay Kumar, IndiGo’s chief strategy and revenue officer.
 
Interestingly, despite many small towns showing an uptick, Udan (the government’s regional connectivity scheme) routes re­m­ain relatively muted. This is because most Udan routes are from towns with a population base of only 1-2 million whereas tier 2 and tier 3, where this surge is being seen, have a larger population base (5-7 million).

 
This small-town surge phenomenon has altered the airline’s priorities both during the pandemic and in the recovery phase. If earlier out of 1,000 flights, 200 were on such rout­es, now 500 could be on these routes. Metro-to-metro, especially Delhi-Mumbai, may have collapsed with high net worth individuals (HNIs), executives of large companies and families being wary of air travel, but the emergence of small-town passengers has helped the airline keep its chin up. The corporate traveller, meanwhile, may be the last to return. And while with a loss of over Rs 3,000 crore in the latest quarter, darkness surrounds IndiGo, as it does all airlines in the country, if small-town India shines, it can soften the blow to an extent.