Winter schedule kicks off with new long and short routes of Indian airlines

The 2021 winter schedule for Indian airlines kicked off in the last week of October amid the industry’s continued battle to resolve a host of factors that have been a drag on it for the last two-three years.

The COVID-19 pandemic dealt a deadly blow to the aviation sector even before it could heal the wounds inflicted by the grounding of Jet Airways, a one-time market leader.

The pandemic led to considerable changes in airline networks. Routes were dropped and new ones came up. Even the profiles of some routes changed.

Air India operates on both the shortest and the longest domestic routes in the country. At 1,340 nautical miles (2,482 km), the New Delhi-Port Blair route is the longest on the domestic network. Air India operates four times a week on this route and takes 3 hours and 35 minutes to cover the distance.

Air India also operates on the shortest route in the country – between Kozhikode and Kannur, which is 51 nautical miles (94 km) and takes 30 minutes to cover.

Here are some of the shortest and longest airline routes in India:

The shortest routes

One would have thought that turboprops, which account for 14 percent of the country’s fleet, would be flying on the shortest routes. But that’s not the case.

Air India operates jets tri-weekly on the Kozhikode-Kannur route, which is part of the Delhi-Kozhikode-Kannur-Delhi route. The great circle distance between Kozhikode and Kannur is 51 nautical miles.

The IndiGo flight that operates every Sunday between Amritsar and Jammu, its shortest route, is an A320. The great circle distance between Amritsar and Jammu is 58 nautical miles. The shortest sector for IndiGo’s ATR fleet is 72 nautical miles, which is longer than its shortest A320 flight.

Alliance Air, the all-ATR 72-600 airline and only carrier owned by the government after the privatisation of Air India, operates the Imphal-Dimapur sector, which is at a distance of 67 nautical miles.

The shortest route for the only other all-ATR operator, TruJet, is even longer. The Hyderabad-Nanded sector, at 132 nautical miles, is the shortest for TruJet.

For all-jet operators Go First and Vistara, the shortest route is between Srinagar and Jammu at 77 nautical miles. For AirAsia India, it is Delhi-Jaipur at 124 nautical miles.

SpiceJet operates a B737 on the Srinagar-Jammu sector, which is the shortest for its jets at 77 nautical miles. Its turboprop Q400’s shortest route is between Delhi and Dehradun at 112 nautical miles, again longer than the shortest route for its Boeing fleet.

The longest routes

The longest route – at 1,340 nautical miles between Delhi and Port Blair – is followed closely by domestic market leader IndiGo in the Bengaluru-Dibrugarh sector at 1,295 nautical miles.

Among the turboprop operators, Alliance Air’s Kolkata-Lilabari route is the longest at 414 nautical miles, while TruJet’s Hyderabad-Goa route at 287 nautical miles is the longest for the airline.

The Q400 has a longer endurance than an ATR and thus countrywide, it is SpiceJet’s Bengaluru-Gwalior sector, which takes 3 hours and 10 minutes to cover a distance of 786 nautical miles, that bags the tag of the longest scheduled turboprop flight.

SpiceJet, which had a couple of longer sectors, has reduced flights by 30 percent in the 2021 winter schedule from levels in winter 2019. This has led the airline to drop some of its longer sectors and now the longest route on its network is 1,005 nautical miles between Bengaluru and Guwahati.

Tail Note

Both dual-fleet operators IndiGo and SpiceJet deploy jets on their shortest routes.

“Sudden unexpected outbreaks and spikes of infection have resulted in many domestic markets being closed at short notices and India, along with Australia and China, have faced those challenges,” said Mayur Patel, head of Asia at OAG Aviation, when asked about the changing flight patterns. “Perhaps where India has been slightly different from other countries is that they have not strived for a zero-COVID strategy which, in turn, has allowed for a more gradual and relaxed approach to reopening markets, particularly in the domestic sector where such flights are so important.”

While both the A320neo and the B737 – the mainstay for airlines in the narrow body segment – have a range of nearly 6,000 km, no two points in the country are that long. One wonders if there is a market for smaller jets that can open up more such long, thin routes.