More Indian passengers prefer non-stop flights to indirect ones: OAG data

More Indian passengers are booking non-stop flights than earlier.The data from OAG shows that  37.2 million passengers made non-stop trips in 2023 - two million more than in pre-Covid 2019. 
 

Passengers flying on indirect flights with one or more stops dropped by 2.5 million in the same period to 27.4 million in 2023.

As a result, 57 per cent of the total 64.6 million passengers in 2023 flew point to point compared to 53 per cent in 2019.
 

OAG analysis shows that the airport hubs which lost out from fewer indirect flyers were the west Asian hubs. They lost one million passengers between 2019 to 2023. The other hubs across the world lost around 2.8 million in the four year period. 
 

In the same period, Indian hubs gained around one million indirect passengers because they added 52 new international routes which were not served by carriers in 2019 at all.
 

The data breaks the myth that Indians prefer to use west Asian carriers as hubs for flights to the US and Europe.

 
 

OAG reckons there has been a significant migration of Indians to the gulf nations. Around 3.6 million Indians are based in the UAE with a further 2.6 million in Saudi Arabia. 
 

“This demographic contributes significantly to the market as levels of traffic visiting friends and relatives back in India will always form an important aspect” said OAG.
 

What has not changed is the  West Asian countries’ dominance in India’s international play. Over a decade ago, the Gulf countries accounted for 48 per cent capacity. This April, the figure increased slightly to 50 per cent.
 

In April, India’s international airline capacity hit 7.3 million seats, an increase of 17 per cent from the 6.2 million seats in the same month in 2019, reflecting the industry’s rapid recovery after the pandemic.
 

The pecking order among the top five countries, based on the capacity between them and India, has changed. The top three slots in April remained the same as they were in 2014, namely the UAE, Singapore and Saudi Arabia. 
 

But in the next two, Thailand has replaced the UK in the fourth position and Qatar has replaced Malaysia in the fifth spot.