Air India to double flights from Delhi next year

With the new integrated terminal coming up at Delhi International Airport (DIAL), Air India’s plans of making Delhi its international as well as domestic hub have begun to take shape.

According to airline officials, by the summer schedule next year, AI will more than double the total number of flights it operates from Delhi - about 486 now to 1200 per week. Officials in the Ministry of Civil Aviation say that the national carrier is looking to launch new, direct flights to several destinations across USA, Europe and Australia in the coming winter schedule, where Delhi would function as an international hub.

To begin with, Air India is thinking of starting direct flights to Chicago and Melbourne in the winter schedule from Delhi and later perhaps also link San Francisco. It already has non-stop flights from Delhi and Mumbai to New York. The idea is to collect passengers from within India (through the domestic network of Indian) at Delhi and also bring in passengers from the Gulf countries and some south-east Asian destinations into Delhi and then give them direct connectivity to western destinations.

“Once Delhi hub starts, the Frankfurt hub solution will fall away. Flights to Frankfurt will continue, but many flights which now go through Frankfurt to destinations in Europe and the USA will not have to go through that port,” the officials told DNA.

The terminal at Delhi, T3, offers an integrated facility where domestic and international passengers would be handled at the same terminal.

Eventually, the same model (of making a domestic and international hub) will be followed by AI for Mumbai airport too.

Similarly, European traffic will be brought to Delhi and then offered onward connectivity to Singapore, Australia and Kuala Lumpur.
Not just Air India, even Jet Airways has been thinking of making Delhi an international hub for some time now. But with no big international expansion lined up at least till 2011, Jet’s plan may still be long-term. According to analysts, the key to making Delhi or Mumbai international hubs lies in an airline’s ability to generate adequate onward traffic.

“For Air India, perhaps the Delhi model may work. But for airlines such as Jet, I don’t know if they can attract enough transiting passengers….enough traffic from the eastern countries to the west will determine if this becomes a reality.”

They point out that Jet is part of no big global airline alliance at present-has only individual code share agreements-so that generating enough onward traffic will become problematic. Air India is poised to join Star Alliance next year and therefore, beginning direct flights to Europe and US while keeping Delhi as a hub would make more sense.

The analysts said that Kingfisher Airlines, with its limited international footprint, was unlikely to think of any such model at present.