What is an Aviation Hub? How Air India will Transform Bengaluru Airport, What are Centre's Plans for Delhi

Air India has announced that it will develop Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru as an aviation hub for southern India for long-haul flights.

Tata Group airlines, which include Vistara and Air India Express, will collaborate with the Bangalore International Airport Limited (BIAL) to strengthen the group’s present flight network at the airport, and establish a domestic lounge, as per the contract.

At present, New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport is the largest international hub in the country for major Indian airlines such as IndiGo and Air India.

What Changes will the Initiative Bring?

The aviation hub at the Bengaluru airport and enhanced international connectivity for south India will work under a hub-and-spoke system. In aviation, this system is built around a central airport to which all traffic from the spoke airports is directed. The hub serves as a transfer point to fly passengers to their final destination, as mentioned in a report by Livemint.

“Airline-airport synergy is key to elevated customer experience and efficient operations, while Bengaluru is highly attractive as an origin and destination market as well as a connecting hub,” Campbell Wilson, chief executive officer and managing director, Air India, said in a statement.

As part of the initiative, Air India has also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Karnataka government to establish Maintenance, Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facilities at the airport.

The MRO is expected to generate 1,200 new job opportunities for highly skilled individuals.

Kempegowda International Airport Bengaluru had a footfall of 37.2 million passengers in 2023 and processes 422,644 tonnes of cargo.

What is an Aviation Hub?

The hub is characterised by the air traffic and flight operations. The airports in an aviation hub act as transfer points for passengers to reach their final destination. These hubs are also identified with one or two leading airlines that provide direct connectivity between major international cities and also to tier-2 and tier-3 cities with one-stop connectivity, as mentioned in a Livemint report.

They are based on hub-and-spoke model to route the plane traffic. A ‘hub’ is a central airport that flights are routed through, and ‘spokes’ are the routes that planes take out of the hub airport. Most major airlines have multiple hubs. The main purpose of the hub-and-spoke system is to save airlines’ cost and give passengers better routes to destinations.

OAG, an aviation research firm, has marked London Heathrow as the most connected airport in the world for 2023, followed by New York’s JFK Airport, Amsterdam Airport of Netherlands, Kuala Lumpur Airport of Malaysia and Haneda Airport of Tokyo.

The most important aspect of setting up a hub is to have dominance of at least one airline. For example, in the Heathrow Airport, the British Airways has 50% share in the total number of flights that operate out of London Heathrow. Delta Airline has 34% share at JKF airport, KLM-Royal airline has 53% share at Amsterdam Schiphol airport and Air Asia has 34% share in flights from Kuala Lumpur.

An airport hub should also offer a minimum transit time between two routes – whether international to international or international to domestic connectivity. Dubai international airport, which has a capacity of 90 million passengers per year, has three major terminals with over 50 gates each, and facilitates a transfer time of up to 30 minutes between each of these terminals, as reported in Livemint.

Hubs in India

The Centre has been pushing for aviation hubs in the country to make to enable one-stop international connectivity via India to overseas destinations, which would not only boost the air traffic but also bring more investment and commerce.

A plan is underway for Delhi, which is India’s largest and busiest airport, and handled 4,29,964 aircraft movements and 65.32 million passenger traffic in 2022-23 (April-March).

According to the Centre’s national aviation hub policy, a panel has been set up by the government to designate Delhi airport as an international hub in line with Dubai and Doha airports.

The policy will address challenges such as doable security checks and immigration bottleneck to allow seamless connectivity between domestic and international flights.

As per the draft policy, the government is also likely to assess the introduction of differential charges for Indian and foreign airlines at airports in the country, Livemint reported.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation and Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) are looking at ways to align every agency to ensure a seamless transfer experience. One solution could be implementing the US pre-clearance facility at Delhi’s IGI, meaning that passengers would arrive in the US as domestic passengers — having cleared US immigration and customs at New Delhi, as mentioned in a report by Hindustan Times.

Under the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Preclearance, CBP personnel at designated foreign airports inspect travellers before boarding US-bound flights. They then bypass CBP and Transportation Security Administration (TSA) inspections upon arrival in the US and proceed directly to their connecting flight or destination.

At present, 15 Preclearance locations are in six countries: Dublin and Shannon in Ireland; Aruba; Bermuda; Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates; Nassau in the Bahamas; and Calgary, Toronto, Edmonton, Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Vancouver, Victoria, and Winnipeg in Canada.