Kamal Ghorui
NEW DELHI: Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) is part of India’s plan to develop four airport hubs to enable seamless transfers mirroring those in Dubai, Doha, Singapore and Frankfurt. While the hub-and-spoke model will roll out first at Delhi IGIA from June 1, the aviation ministry has begun work on the other three: KIA, Mumbai and Rajkot Hirasar.Once the infrastructure is in place, passengers can fly into these airports from multiple cities within India and then connect smoothly to international flights.
For instance, a passenger flying Lucknow-Delhi-London can do a check-in of baggage at Lucknow itself if both flights (Lucknow to Delhi, and Delhi to London) are of the same airline or of code-share partner carriers. This eliminates the need to collect and recheck bags at the hub. Customs and immigration processes will also be streamlined at the hub airport, making transfers more efficient than before.While India already has modern airport infrastructure that requires tweaks, it hopes to have strong airlines, apart from IndiGo, once the Air India group gets its act together and others like Akasa grow with time.“For each hub, we are identifying spoke partners. The idea is to ensure a passenger — flying from Raipur to Oman via Rajkot, for instance — is able to clear customs and immigration at Raipur itself and then take the connecting flight to Oman from Rajkot. The return journey will be equally smooth,” said a senior official.The aviation ministry is coordinating with home, finance and external affairs ministries, among others, as many aspects required for a true hub-and-spoke model are within their remit.While Air India group, IndiGo and Akasa count Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru as key bases, Rajkot is likely to get its required airline connectivity for both domestic and international legs from IndiGo, said people implementing the plan. “Rajkot is the easternmost reasonably big airport of India, with key Gulf destinations less than two hours away.In the past few decades, the absence of strong desi airlines and airports meant the real hubs for Indian globetrotters were outside the country. With India creating big airports since the start of the millennium and its airlines having a large number of wide-body aircraft on order, govt feels it is time to shift this mega transfer business to the country.Govt is tackling what is the biggest pain point for international to domestic transfer passengers. They need to collect their baggage on the port of arrival in India; clear customs and then check-in baggage again for the domestic connecting flight. “Baggage for both inbound and outbound international passengers will be transferred seamlessly through airside operations at the hub airport, eliminating the need for passenger intervention,” the aviation ministry said.
