Vistara starts Bengaluru and Guwahati flights from Kolkata

Today the Tata Singapore Airlines joint venture full service carrier, Vistara has commenced two new routes from Kolkata to Bengaluru and Guwahati and thus providing one-stop direct flight connection between Bengaluru and Guwahati via Kolkata. The airline is now operating over 500 weekly flights in a network of 44  routes across 18 destinations. With the launch of Bengaluru and Guwahati routes from Kolkata today, Kolkata comes at per with Mumbai in Vistara's network with four non-stop routes and ranks third in terms of overall operations with seven daily departures following Delhi and Mumbai. Vistara currently has a fleet of 13 Airbus A320-232 aircraft out of which it stations two in Kolkata, one each in Bengaluru and Mumbai while the rest nine are based in its Delhi hub. 

Air India rejigs Northeast operations from Kolkata

Starting from the winter schedule, Air India is restructuring its Northeast flights from Kolkata with triangular flights being converted to terminating return flights same as it abandons such routing on international too. The airline is also adding second daily flight to Agartala and increasing frequencies of Aizawl, Dibrugarh, Dimapur and Silchar route from Kolkata at the same time dropping the Dimapur-Dibrugarh route and the Imphal-Aizawl sector while the Aizawl-Imphal sector will still have two-weekly flights. Due to poor demands on these intra-Northeast sectors lead to suspension of these few services where Air India operates its 144 seater all economy Airbus A319 as of today. Bagdogra-Kolkata is the only Northeast route where Air India is scaling back to three weekly service compared to four-weekly during summer.

SpiceJet commences Q400 operations from Kolkata

SpiceJet, the second largest low-cost carrier of India has commenced turbo-prop operations from Kolkata. The Eastern metropolitan city becomes fourth base for the LCC's Bombardier Q400 fleet following Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad. As many as three such aircraft are being stationed in Kolkata which will initially operate to six routes from the city. The airline is adding three new destinations Aizawl, Gorakhpur and Silchar from 4 October 2016 taking the network size to 39 cities in India. While Aizawl, Gorakhpur and Vizag would be complete new route for SpiceJet from Kolkata, Bagdogra and Guwahati are two routes where it already run flights with mainline jets. With these SpiceJet is scaling up its network in Northeast India where its presence was so far limited to Agartala, Bagdogra and Guwahati. The flights to Aizawal and Silchar will further continue up to Guwahati before heading back to Kolkata via those airports therefore adding new CAT-II and CAT-IIA capacity. This is in line with the Government of India's policy of promoting regional connectivity. 

Vistara launches Bengaluru-Guwahati flight via Kolkata

Vistara has opened reservation for double daily Kolkata-Bengaluru flights and daily Kolkata-Guwahati flight effective from 18 October 2016. The full-service airline will provide one-stop direct flight connection between Bengaluru and Guwahati via Kolkata. Vistara is also adding a third daily flight on the Kolkata-Delhi flight along with Delhi-Port Blair via Kolkata flight from end September. This will make Kolkata, the third largest operations of Vistara with seven daily flights to four destinations following Delhi and Mumbai. 

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. 

Underserved Route: Kolkata-Pune

Kolkata and Pune, the two major cities of the East and West India, are served by the fifth busiest and ninth busiest airports in India respectively. But the direct air connectivity between Kolkata and Pune is not yet fully developed as only one daily non-stop flight and three one-stop direct flights are operational on the route as of date. In fact Kolkata is the only metro city which receives just one daily non-stop flight from Pune. Still a rapid increase has been experienced in the demand of air travel between the two cities in recent times. In May 2016, a total of 19,323 O&D passengers (two-way) have traveled between Kolkata and Pune, reporting a 26% growth from almost a year ago.

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

The Curious Case of Kolkata-Europe direct flight

Currently Kolkata airport lacks any direct link to Europe, so people travelling to European destinations have to fly via Delhi, Mumbai or Middle East hubs. Even smaller cities like Ahmedabad and Amritsar have direct flight to London and Birmingham via Mumbai and Delhi respectively owing to much larger diaspora from Gujarat and Punjab compared to that of Bengal. Kolkata's long-haul international market heavily depends on visiting friends and relatives (VFR) traffic which is often price sensitive therefore a sizable demand for economy-class seats exist but premier class (business-class or higher) demand remains low on European routes.