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