Prospective Route: Delhi-Osaka Non-Stop

As it is expected, air passenger traffic between Asian megacities going to dominate the global long-haul air travel market in the coming years. And by 2030 the top 10 Asian megacities will be Tokyo, Delhi, Shanghai, Mumbai, Beijing, Dhaka, Karachi, Osaka, Kolkata and Guangzhou. At present, Delhi is connected to all the above megacities with non-stop flights barring Osaka in Japan. Although Air India operates a three weekly direct flight on the Delhi-Osaka route but it flies via Hong Kong. Air India's one-stop flight on the 6,230 km (3,364 nm) Delhi-Hong Kong-Osaka route is significantly longer than a prospective non-stop flight on the 5,483 km (2,960 nm) Delhi-Osaka route. As a result Air India caters to only 25% of the O&D market. Therefore a non-stop flight would better serve the city-pair and unlock the true potential of the route.

Vistara anchors at Port Blair

Vistara adds Port Blair as its 18th destination to its network. The airline to operate daily flight to Port Blair from its Delhi hub via Kolkata from 30 September 2016. It also adds a third daily flight on the Delhi-Kolkata sector from the same day. Vistara is expanding domestic operations with the arrival of its 12th aircraft (likely registration VT-TTM) in late September and Port Blair is in many way the obvious choice for the airline as it was indicated in the blog before. The service launch is perfectly timed given the peak tourists season in Port Blair stars from October onward. The island city is among the top 10 busiest domestic destinations out of Kolkata so the airline opens the second route from Kolkata to Port Blair after Delhi. It becomes only the third destination in Vistara's network where the airline does not fly non-stop from its Delhi hub, Bagdogra and Jammu being the other two. Though primarily focused on business travellers, Vistara has a growing list of leisure destinations including Goa, Jammu, Kochi, Port Blair and Srinagar.

May 2016: Performances of Indian carriers in domestic aviation market

Airlines in India together carried a total of 86.69 lakh (8.66 million) passengers in the domestic sector in May 2016. Continuing its dream run with above 20% year on year growth rate, the domestic aviation sector had handled 396.04 lakh passengers with 22.87% growth during January-May 2016 over the same period a year ago. While the MoM growth rate for the month of May was at 21.63%. Going by the passenger growth figures and the planned capacity expansion in the coming months (LCCs like IndiGo, GoAir and FSC like Vistara), it can now be said that domestic aviation sector in India to record 100 million annual passenger for the first time in 2016.

Vistara crosses 2 million passenger milestone

Vistara, India's newest full-service carrier, flew its two millionth passenger today. Being the fastest growing full-service carrier in India, the airline crossed two million mark in record time. Vistara, which had started its operation on 9 January 2015, took 17 months to achieve this milestone as it was predicted in this blog before. Earlier it had achieved one million flyers on 23 December 2015 just before completing one year of operation.

Korean Air to launch Delhi flight in December 2016

Latest Update as of 2 July 2016: Korean Air launches 5x weekly flight on Delhi-Seoul Incheon route effective from 1 December 2016 and to be operated on Airbus A330-200 aircraft.

Korean Air plans to launch non-stop direct flight to Delhi from its Seoul Incheon hub in December 2016. Delhi features prominently among the new routes the carrier mulling as part of its long-haul international network revamp. The airline is also planning to launch a direct flight to Tehran while it is to drop Sao Paulo flight after the end of Olympic Games. Korean Air, the largest airline of South Korea, already serves Mumbai with three weekly flights from Seoul Incheon and is expected to operate at least three weekly flights to Delhi.

Vistara to go Big with Kolkata

Vistara, the premium full service carrier has extended its service to Kolkata with double daily* flights to Delhi commencing today. Kolkata, the fifth busiest airport in India and the busiest airport in Eastern India, becomes the 17th destination of the airline, it also the third busiest domestic route from Delhi Airport. As of today, Vistara operates a total of 457 weekly flights in a network of 36 routes across India. And the airline plans to increase the number of weekly flights to 580 by the start of the winter schedule 2016-17 (effective 30 October 2016) with Kolkata having the third largest operation after Delhi and Mumbai. Vistara seems to be bullish about its prospect in Kolkata as it plans to operate as many as six-seven daily flights from Kolkata on four different routes by the year end. In the immediate term, it is likely to announce the second route from Kolkata by early next week and it would be interesting to see whether it opens the route to a destination within its existing network (like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Guwahati) or launch a all new destination (like Port Blair).

Vistara team during service launch in Kolkata on 9 June 2016