Delhi is already an aviation hub; how does one make it stronger?

Delhi is already an aviation hub; how does one make it stronger?

Last week, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said the government had initiated a plan to transform Indian airports into aviation hubs, beginning with Delhi. It was not the first time such a statement has been made; Scindia said the same thing in November last year.

The naysayers were up in arms again, listing the challenges India confronts before dreaming of becoming an aviation hub. While there are challenges that continue, time and again we have overcome those in the past and there is nothing wrong in nurturing the dream. While the tussle continues between believers and non-believers, the numbers never lie.

Be it Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong or Atlanta, if one looks at any hub, it has one strong airline and with Air India, its large plane orders, and IndiGo’s international ambitions, India will likely have two strong carriers, not one. Air India always had a hub, but what differentiates now is the investments going into Air India, unlike before.

Delhi - the hub?

In 2008-09, the title of busiest airport in the country shifted from Mumbai to Delhi. There has been no looking back since then for Delhi. The reasons for the shift were obvious. Delhi came up with a new terminal and a third runway that allowed simultaneous parallel operations, which was not possible with the earlier two runways. All in all, it helped increase movement and that helped add more passengers. Air India shifted its hub operations to Delhi, giving it a much-needed boost.

Delhi has gone from strength to strength since then, largely also due to IndiGo’s growth on the domestic front. As the country moved more towards Low-Cost Carriers, rather than Full-Service Carriers (FCCs), the former themselves moved from the pureplay LCC model of point-to-point traffic to a value carrier of connecting traffic.

At the end of 2022, Delhi was connected to 79 domestic destinations and 62 international destinations. Seventy percent of Indian airports fall under Delhi’s catchment area, which can be reached in between 90 and 100 minutes by air. The airport has consistently seen an increase in connecting passengers. In FY 21-22, the proportion stood at 25 percent with the hub traffic recoding a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 9.78 percent for FY16 to FY20.

Data released by GMR shows that Air India saw 11.5 million at Delhi in FY 19-20, with 3.56 million being transfer passengers. IndiGo has a larger presence at Delhi and even with constraints in transfers, unlike Air India, IndiGo saw 6.28 million transfer passengers in Delhi in FY 19-20, while the total passengers stood at 17.97 million.

Hubs work on fast connections and Delhi Airport has tweaked its connection times effectively. From 90 minutes for a Domestic-to-Domestic connection in 2010, the airport got it down to 45 minutes in 2022. Likewise, there have been improvements for Domestic-to-International and vice-versa which reduced connection times from 120 minutes to 75 minutes while International-to-International reduced from 90 minutes to 60 minutes. It is this part which needs maximum focus when building a truly global hub like that at Dubai, Singapore or Hong Kong.

The improved numbers look impressive, but they are only for Terminal 3. IndiGo’s operations are currently scattered across all airlines, making all connectivity difficult, except for International-to-International.

A lot needs to be done

A lot of international expansion will be driven from across the country for both Air India and IndiGo. However, Delhi will remain prime in its plans. With an order book of 450+ each for both, Delhi’s infrastructure will be stretched to the limit. A fourth runway is awaiting operationalisation along with an elevated taxiway for better use of resources. A new Terminal 1 will increase contact gates and bays; the airport capacity will go up to 100 million passengers annually, but these capacity numbers have no meaning if they are not backed by adequate runway capacity, which is driven by Air Traffic Control and throughput at Security, Immigration and Customs, all of which are under the aegis of different central ministries and not under the private operator.

India’s tryst with airports with swing gates has not been very successful. At the same time, no airport in the country has been able to start multiple terminals with international and domestic operations. The right mix of terminal infrastructure is yet to be found. A hub sees very high traffic for a specific period, so the annual capacity makes little sense. What matters is the ability to handle the spike, which today is missing. Instead of bucketing what the airport can do and what the government can do, it is time to see what everyone can jointly do. Delhi is already a hub, efforts need to be put to make it stronger.