By Singh, Published on October 21st, 2023 in News
By: Ravreet Singh
After Vistara, Air India Group’s low-cost subsidiary, Air India Express is now all set to further strengthen the position of Air India Group at Amritsar, with the introduction of daily non-stop services to Hyderabad.
Starting November 17th 2023, the airline will initiate daily non-stop services between the two cities, offering approximately upto 10,800 seats per month on the route.
With the initiation of this non-stop route, Air India Express would not only be serving the traffic bound for Hyderabad from Amritsar, but also the traffic for Nanded.
As per the traffic data available, over 90,000 people travelled between Amritsar and Hyderabad in the year 2019. Whereas over 23,000 people between Amritsar and Nanded during the same time period.
It is notable that, India’s largest carrier, IndiGo once served this route with non-stop services between November 2018 and February 2020.
The entry of Air India Express in Amritsar’s domestic market, where IndiGo for long has established its monopoly on all the domestic routes except Delhi and Mumbai, signifies the aim of Air India Group as a whole to capture a larger domestic market share of India and compete with IndiGo.
From November 2023 onwards, Air India Group, including Vistara, will now have an collective 81x weekly departures from Amritsar on 7 routes to Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Dubai, Sharjah, London and Birmingham, deploying approximately a total of 122,592* seats per month.
The breakdown as follow:
● Air India
Frequency: 41x weekly
Routes: Delhi (28x), Mumbai (7x), London Gatwick (3x) and Birmingham (3x)
Seats: 64,608*
● Vistara
Frequency: 21x weekly
Routes: Delhi (14x) and Mumbai (7x)
Seats: 29,040*
● Air India Express
Frequency: 19x weekly
Routes: Hyderabad (7x), Dubai (7x) and Sharjah (5x)
Seats: 28,944*
As Air India Express continues to induct new Boeing 737 Max 8 aircraft into the fleet, as well as aircraft from AirAsia India, the airline could potentially look at a significant domestic and international expansion from Amritsar in the near future to challenge the monopoly of IndiGo in this market.
As of now, IndiGo will have over 98x weekly departures from Amritsar in the upcoming Winter Schedule 2023-24. The airline will have complete exclusivity on 7 of 9 domestic routes it will operate from Amritsar, including, Srinagar, Lucknow, Kolkata, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Pune, Goa.
Some of the most potential unserved routes from Amritsar include, Chennai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Muscat, Kuwait and Bangkok, which could be well-served by Air India Express.
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