Regional Connectivity: Aviation's next big frontier

This article was first published on Mukherjee's LinkedIn profile.

With big metro airports getting increasingly saturated, it pose a threat to derail the hyper growth (above 20%) that the Indian airline industry currently experiencing. For long air travel in India has remained restricted primarily between metro cities with few key inter-metro routes occupying the lion-share of airlines capacity for example the Delhi-Mumbai and it is the world's sixth largest domestic sector in terms of deployed capacity in 2016. This time government is right in its emphasis on tier-2, tier-3 cities where the next round of growth would come from. India's smaller cities have so far remained neglected with very little connectivity that too mostly to nearby state capitals, now with new unconventional routes between tier-2 and tier-3 cities being opened up it would write a new chapter in India's aviation growth story.

Welcome Air Carnival, India's fourth regional airline

The southern sky turns pink today with the launch of Air Carnival. The Coimbatore based new regional airline just commences its commercial operations with its inaugural flight took off from Coimbatore Airport at 7:30 am and landed at Chennai Airport around around 9:00 am then it flew onward to Madurai. India Aviation Forum welcomes the new entrant and wishes best for its future. Air Carnival (IATA code: 2S), promoted by the Coimbatore based CMC group, becomes India's 14th carrier (with active AOP) and fourth regional carrier following Air Costa, Air Pegasus and TruJet. Notably, all four regional carrier are based in South India and Chennai is common in all four network. This highlights the prospect of Govt's regional connectivity scheme in the recently launched national civil aviation policy 2016. 

Revealed: Air Costa's 4 aircraft pattern with 34 flights from 17 January 2016

Air Costa, the Vijayawada based regional carrier is expanding its operation in the new year with at least 1 more aircraft joining its fleet by the first half of January 2016. From the flight schedule it has opened for booking effective from 17 January 2016 it is evident that the airline going to fly 4 aircraft. The airline had earlier announced that it would add 3 more 110 seats E-190 on dry-lease and return the remaining E-170 in its fleet by March 2016. Currently it has 2 Embraer E-190 (VT-LBR, VT-LVR) and 1 E-170 (VT-LNR) in its fleet therefore at least 1 more E-190 is obvious to join by mid January. However it is not clear whether the airline will return the last E-170 to the lessor and add 2 more E-190 or maintain a fleet of 3 E-190 and 1 E-170 1 E-170. Air Costa has flied an application for national permit to DGCA, once it receives, the airline is expecting to start pan-India service in next couple of months.

As per the flight schedule made available, Air Costa to fly 34 flights a day with a 4 aircraft fleet from 17 January 2016. 3 out of 4 aircraft will be based at Chennai while the remaining 1 to be based at Vijayawada. The airline is adding additional frequencies on key routes and restores some of the routes it had to suspend earlier due to small fleet size. In fact it was left with just 1 active aircraft in its fleet for a few days in November. Although it was supposed to return both E-170 aircraft by November 2015 but had to bring back 1 of them (VT-LNR) for a short period to maintain its flight schedule. With the new schedule there will be double daily flights on Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam route and it will restore Visakhapatnam-Tirupati flight via Hyderabad.

The 1st pattern flies 9 flights a day with block time of 13 hrs.

MAA-AMD-BLR-VTZ-HYD-TIR-HYD-VTZ-HYD-MAA

Route	Flight No	Departure	Arrival
MAA-AMD	LB 632	05:20	07:40
AMD-BLR	LB 614	08:05	10:20
BLR-VTZ	LB 692	11:00	12:35
VTZ-HYD	LB 671	13:00	14:20
HYD-TIR	LB 671	14:45	15:45
TIR-HYD	LB 672	16:10	17:10
HYD-VTZ	LB 672	17:35	18:45
VTZ-HYD	LB 652	19:10	20:20
HYD-MAA	LB 652	20:45	21:55

The 2nd pattern involves 8 flights a day with block time of 12 hrs.

MAA-BLR-HYD-MAA-JAI-MAA-HYD-BLR-MAA

Route	Flight No	Departure	Arrival
MAA-BLR	LB 637	07:20	08:20
BLR-HYD	LB 693	08:45	09:55
HYD-MAA	LB 654	10:20	11:30
MAA-JAI	LB 634	11:55	14:35
JAI-MAA	LB 635	15:00	17:40
MAA-HYD	LB 653	18:05	19:15
HYD-BLR	LB 694	19:40	20:50
BLR-MAA	LB 638	21:15	22:15

The 3rd pattern flies only 7 flights a day but it clocks the highest block time of 13 hrs 40 mins as it involves relatively longer flights.

MAA-HYD-VTZ-BLR-JAI-BLR-AMD-MAA

Route	Flight No	Departure	Arrival
MAA-HYD	LB 651	05:25	06:40
HYD-VTZ	LB 651	07:05	08:15
VTZ-BLR	LB 691	08:40	10:20
BLR-JAI	LB 696	10:45	13:15
JAI-BLR	LB 697	13:45	16:20
BLR-AMD	LB 613	17:30	19:40
AMD-MAA	LB 633	20:05	22:25

The 4th pattern involves record 10 flights a day with block time of 10 hrs 10 min. The aircraft will be based at Vijayawada.

VGA-BLR-CJB-HYD-VGA-BLR-VGA-HYD-CJB-BLR-VGA

Route	Flight No	Departure	Arrival
VGA-BLR	LB 666	07:15	08:15
BLR-CJB	LB 666	08:35	09:25
CJB-HYD	LB 636	09:45	11:05
HYD-VGA	LB 636	11:25	12:15
VGA-BLR	LB 668	13:00	14:00
BLR-VGA	LB 673	14:30	15:30
VGA-HYD	LB 667	16:00	16:50
HYD-CJB	LB 667	17:15	18:35
CJB-BLR	LB 655	18:55	19:45
BLR-VGA	LB 655	20:05	21:15