India-Italy air-connectivity & scope for fifth freedom flight

Though India-Italy relations are not at the best level in recent times. Still cultural and and commercial ties are strong between the Europe's fourth largest economy and the world's fastest growing major economy India. In fact Italy is home to the second largest Indian diaspora in Europe, after the UK with around 150,000 people of Indian-origin based there. At present, Air India and China Airlines (Taiwan) are the only two airlines to operate non-stop flights between the two countries. The later enjoys fifth-freedom traffic rights between India and Italy. Air India offers direct flights to both Rome and Milan from its Delhi hub while China Airlines operates Taipei-Delhi-Rome service. Air India which has returned to Italy market in 2014 almost after a decade, initially used to operate Delhi-Rome-Milan-Delhi triangular service on four days and on the other direction on three days. Later, it had split the triangular service to three weekly Delhi-Rome terminating service and four weekly Delhi-Milan-Delhi in the winter 2015-16 schedule. The India-Italy non-stop capacity to go down from December 2016 with China Airlines withdrawing from the Delhi-Rome sector, therefore opening up opportunities for more non-stop service in the already under-served India-Italy market. Another long-haul carrier from Taiwan, EVA Air is coming to Delhi in late 2016 or early 2017, it also has plans to fly Barcelona and Milan in Europe. It would be interesting to see whether the Taiwanese carrier flies to these European destinations from Delhi exercising the fifth freedom  rights.

Saudia changes India operations in W16

In the upcoming winter 2016-17 schedule effective from 30 October 2016, Saudi Arabian Airlines, Saudia  making major changes in its Indian operations. This includes dropping Dammam-Bengaluru sector while other routes see capacity augmentation. The airline increasing Jeddah flight frequencies from Delhi and Mumbai and Riyadh flight frequencies from Bengaluru, Delhi and Mumbai. While Hyderabad flights see operating aircraft being upgauged from Airbus A330-300 to Boeing 777-200ER to both Jeddah and Riyadh. 

July 2016: Performance of Indian carriers in domestic aviation market

Airlines in India together carried a total of 85.08 lakh (8.58 million) passengers in the domestic sector in July 2016. Continuing its dream run with above 20% year on year growth rate, the domestic aviation sector had handled 560.87 lakh passengers with 23.01% YoY growth during first six month (January-July) of 2016 over the same period a year ago. While the MoM growth rate for the month of July was at 25.82%. Going by the passenger growth trend of the first half of 2016 and the planned capacity expansion during the second half of 2016 (LCCs like IndiGo, GoAir and FSC like Vistara), it remains only matter of time that domestic aviation sector in India to record 100 million annual passenger for the first time in 2016. While IndiGo maintained and further consolidated its top position in terms of domestic market share SpiceJet continued to outperform others in terms of load factors with above 90% PLF for 15 straight months and Vistara once again occupied the top position in the on-time performance charts.

Air India rejigs UK, USA services from Today

Today Air India's Boeing 787-8 fleet making its US debut with inaugural Ahmedabad-London-Newark flight. Air India has also resumed its transatlantic fifth freedom flights between London and Newark. Delhi loses one of the seven flights to London (three by Air India) at the cost of Ahmedabad's own four weekly non-stop flight to London. 

Vistara grows two fold in Delhi, 7 new destinations in last 12 months

Vistara has increased monthly departures from its hub Delhi Airport to almost double (93% growth MoM) in August 2016. While Guwahati sees the biggest MoM increase in its monthly departures with first non-stop flight to Delhi added in mid-June 2016. The airline has added seven new destinations to its network in the last one year. And two more destinations are expected to be added by the year end and hopefully early in the winter 2016 schedule. Among the two new destinations to be added, Amritsar is believed to be a front runner while the other one most likely to be a short distance North Indian route from Delhi (CAT-III). Delhi being its hub, clearly leading with 16 direct routes followed by Mumbai (4), Bengaluru (2), Goa (2), Guwahati (2), Kochi (2), Srinagar (2) while all other 10 stations are served by only one route each. Vistara is expected to launch Bengaluru-Kolkata flight, the third non-stop route from Bengaluru while the number of non-stop routes from Kolkata to be increased to four by October 2016. Port Blair (18th destination in the network), the second route from Kolkata is scheduled from 30 September 2016.

Top 10 Busiest Airports in India in H1-2016

India, the fastest growing air-travel market in the world, is experiencing the biggest boom in passenger numbers in recent years. Indian airlines carried more than 47.5 million passengers in domestic sector alone in the first six months of 2016 with 22.5% year-on-year (YoY) growth. And the full year domestic passenger volume in 2016 is expected to cross 100 million mark for the first time. As a result, India's top airports are bustling with passenger traffic growing at double digit rate and outpacing even the most liberal growth forecast. Airports in key metropolis like Mumbai, the financial capital of India, is nearing saturation and facing huge congestion. Five out of top ten airports in the list grew at more than 20% rate in H1-2016 which is unparalleled currently in the world. Barring Mumbai all other airports post double digit passenger growth rate. Mumbai too grew at 9.7% YoY rate which by all standard considered as high growth given its large base. Delhi and Bengaluru airports are the star performers with 21% YoY growth with the already large passenger base.