Indian states with maximum number of airports and monopoly routes

Delhi International Airport

Airlines are gearing up for the busy summer season for the first time since 2018. While the pandemic wiped out 2020, 2021 and the recovery wasn’t full in 2022, Indian aviation had a setback in 2019 as Jet Airways shut down just before the busy season in April 2019. The aviation landscape of 2018 and that of 2023 is vastly different.

With 107 airports across airlines, the country is back to having 100+ operational airports. IndiGo, the market leader and largest carrier by fleet, is operating to 78 destinations in the country or three-fourths of the airports.

It is followed by the only government-owned carrier, Alliance Air, which with its small fleet of 18 ATR 72-600s, two ATR 42-600s and one Dornier Do-228 is operating to 58 destinations, most of them under the Regional Connectivity Scheme-UDAN. The data has been exclusively shared by OAG Aviation for this article.

Air India comes in next with 46 destinations while SpiceJet serves 39 and Vistara serves 32. Go FIRST serves 27 destinations while AirAsia India, which is set to merge with Air India Express, serves 20. Start-up Akasa Air serves 14 destinations with many more lined up in this and next month and the count will substantially go up when it launches services to Bagdogra, Dehradun and Kolkata.

Regional carrier Star Air has spread itself thin, similar to Alliance Air, and is operating to 18 destinations with a fleet of 7 planes, two of which haven’t started operations yet.

Airports with maximum airlines, and monopoly

There are four airports that serve nine airlines each. Interestingly, this does not include Delhi -- the largest airport in the country. Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Guwahati have nine airlines operating.

IndiGo, Air India, Vistara, Go FIRST, SpiceJet, AirAsia India, Akasa Air and Alliance Air are common to these four airports. Star Air operates to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad but not Guwahati, while flybig operates only from Guwahati amongst these -- making it nine airlines each at the four airports.

There are six airports, including Delhi, with eight airlines each. There are 31 airports in the country where there is only one airline which is operating. These airports always remain at risk of losing out on air connectivity as was the case when Trujet shut down. Thirteen of these have a service by Alliance Air, one by flybig, six by SpiceJet, two by Star Air and eight by IndiGo and one by IndiaOne.

States with maximum airports

Gujarat, with 9, tops the states with maximum operational airports. Airports in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Bhuj, Bhavnagar, Surat, Jamnagar, Kandla and Keshod ave regular services. Gujarat is followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Uttar Pradesh at eight each. Uttar Pradesh was to go miles ahead in this race but the airports in Aligarh, Azamgarh, Chitrakoot, Shravasti and\, Modababad have not yet commissioned. Airports in Jewar (Noida) and Ayodhya are under construction.

This is followed by Assam with seven operational airports, a quantum jump - thanks largely to flybig and Alliance Air’s focus and priority routes under RCS-UDAN. States like Odisha and Chattisgarh, which have struggled to move beyond one operational airport, also have more airports being served these days.

Monopoly routes

Amongst the top seven airlines in India, there are 901 city pairs that are served; a staggering 618 of these are monopoly routes while 145 are duopoly routes. An eye-popping 538 sectors are a monopoly for IndiGo. The market leader operates in 815 sectors in all. This network gives the airline the ability to push its yields up one small step at a time. SpiceJet comes in second with 57 monopoly routes. This is much fewer than what the airline operated at its peak.

Air India has just 12 monopoly routes while Vistara has two. AirAsia India has four while Go FIRST has five.

How it shapes Indian aviation from here on

Gone are the days of new railway lines and trains being announced before elections, the demand these days is for airports and flights as we head into an election year from here on - one would expect more airports to be inaugurated along with services to those.

The country has seen 110 airports being operational in one of the scheduling seasons only to go below 100 in the next as airlines curtailed operations and TruJet went down. The monopoly routes and airports are always under the constant shadow of being off the air map. RCS-UDAN’s success lies in expanding connectivity but not many routes have been able to sustain beyond the concession period and there lies the challenge for airlines and the aviation ecosystem.