Air India Express on Wednesday announced that it will start flights from Ghaziabad’s Hindon Airport, which will make it the only carrier to operate from two airports in the National Capital Region (NCR). The airline, which is a subsidiary of Air India, will operate a total of 28 direct flights between Hindon and Bengaluru, Goa, and Kolkata from August 1, the carrier said in a release.
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“Besides operating over 280 flights a week from Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) in New Delhi, AIX (Air India Express) will be operating from Hindon Airport, ensuring enhanced connectivity to/from other cities in Western UP, Uttarakhand and Haryana,” the airline said, adding that Hindon’s “strategic location” within the NCR. The catchment area that the airline hopes will benefit from operations at Hindon includes central and eastern Delhi, parts of western Uttar Pradesh, parts of Haryana, and even parts of Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh.
Air India Express will operate two daily return flights from Bengaluru and a daily return flight each from Kolkata and Goa to the Hindon airport.
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“Our network expansion is focussed on enhancing connectivity across the rapidly growing domestic and short-haul international market, particularly the new and underserved routes. The maturity and size of major metropolitan areas in India can support secondary airports, spreading the benefits of air connectivity and further stimulating growth…The new services will complement our operations from the primary airport serving Delhi NCR, providing convenient options,” said Air India Express Managing Director Aloke Singh.
In addition to providing non-stop connectivity to destinations such as Bengaluru, Goa, and Kolkata, Air India Express plans to connect Hindon airport through one-stop itineraries to other key stations on its network, including Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Kozhikode, Kannur, Kochi, Hyderabad, Imphal, Bagdogra, Mangalore, Mumbai, Pune, and Thiruvananthapuram, the airline said.
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Interestingly, the announcement comes just months ahead of the inauguration of the upcoming Noida International Airport (NIA) at Jewar in Western Uttar Pradesh. While the Hindon airport, which is the civil enclave of an Indian Air Force base, has been there for a while, it has so far been mostly used to operate flights by regional carriers.
In October last year, the government permitted the Airports Authority of India (AAI) to have regular scheduled commercial flights from the Hindon airport. The decision did not go down well with IGI Airport’s operator Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL), which moved the Delhi High Court against the Centre’s decision. According to DIAL, allowing regular scheduled commercial flight operations from Hindon would be detrimental to IGI Airport and even the NIA, as the combined passenger handling capacity of the two airports is projected to be sufficient for the next three decades.
With the IGI airport, which is the largest airport in the country, having high and growing traffic load and demand for air travel booming in India, the need for a secondary airport has been felt for some time now. The NIA, which would be substantially larger than the Hindon airport, is expected to be the major secondary airport for the NCR. India’s largest airline IndiGo and fledgling carrier Akasa Air have announced plans to operate from the NIA. To be sure, the IGI Airport has not hit its saturation level, and there is still some scope for capacity expansion.
