As recently as last month, Bengaluru was ranked the fastest-growing Technology Hub in the world. The city has now added to its illustrious list of honors by the city’s main Airport (Kempegowda International), adding a further three routes to its domestic operations to bring the total tally to 61 routes. The key factor to emerge from this is that they now have more domestic routes than pre-Covid times!
The three additional domestic routes are Jorhat and Gorakhpur (operated by IndiGo) and Jharsuguda (operated by SpiceJet).
Furthermore, Bengaluru Airport took a bigger chunk of the Pie Chart in the past two Fiscal Years, witnessing an increase in non-metro passenger traffic from 55% in 2019-20 to 64% in 2020-21. Consequently, rather than undertake a road to recovery during a pandemic, the Airport has taken a road to growth, thereby resulting in healthy Air Passenger Traffic compared to its fellow metro cities.
India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation, in liaison with the Government of India, has been focusing on improving India’s regional connectivity, and Bengaluru is leading the way towards that goal.
Airport to Connect 66 Routes
With Bengaluru being the epicenter of connectivity to South India and other non-metro hubs, there will soon be an additional five routes added to its domestic operations. These will be rolled out in February and March as follows:
February
Rajkot and Durgapur (operated by SpiceJet),
Dibrugarh (operated by IndiGo)
March
Agra and Kurnool (Air Carrier TBC)
The Operator of Bengaluru Airport (Bengaluru International Airport Limited) attributes the additional route coverage to increased passengers’ confidence in flying due to the Airport’s comprehensive Covid-19 compliance implementations. They said:
“A daily average of 270 flights, carrying an average of 30,000 passengers per day, departed to non-metro cities in January 2021. There has been a three-fold increase in transfer passengers.”
