How India plans to create Dubai or Doha in Delhi: hub-and-spoke design airport plans launched

NEW DELHI: India is finalizing its hub-and-spoke policy of flying passengers between small towns and other parts of the world through hubs such as Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The move comes as Air India and IndiGo receive a large number of wide-body aircraft orders; the era of India’s hub airports is coming, and they are preparing for connections between domestic and international flights; the Gulf’s largest international travel hubs to and from India, such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, are also facing uncertainty when it comes to resuming operations before February 28. Union Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu and Secretary Samir Sinha on Thursday visited the upcoming hub at IGI Delhi, India’s busiest airport, to fine-tune the policy and start implementing it in earnest.Sinha is solving the biggest pain points for international-to-domestic travelers – they need to collect their luggage at the port of arrival in India; clear customs and then check-in again for their connecting domestic flight. “Luggage of incoming and outgoing international passengers will be transferred seamlessly through airside operations at hub airports without passenger intervention,” the aviation ministry said of the changes under the new hub-and-spoke policy.On the other hand, passengers traveling from India (e.g. from Lucknow to Delhi to London) can check their baggage at Lucknow Airport if both flights are with the same airline or an alliance codeshare partner airline. Domestic to international transfer operation process: “Under the hub-and-spoke model, passengers from various smaller cities will be integrated in a coordinated manner and continue their international flights through major hub airports like Delhi. At the spoke (smaller origin) airports, passengers will be issued two separate boarding passes clearly marked with ‘D’ (domestic) and ‘I’ (international) designators,” the aviation ministry said in a statement.“Customs and immigration procedures for outbound passengers will be completed at the first exit point (i.e., the radiating airport), and passengers on such outbound trips will not be able to use customs declaration facilities during transit,” the statement said.International transfer and domestic transfer operation process: “For incoming passengers, customs and immigration procedures will take place at the final point of entry into the country, which will again be the spoke airport…. Baggage of incoming and outgoing international passengers will be seamlessly transferred through the hub airport’s airside operations without passenger intervention. To maintain operational efficiency and regulatory clarity, combined flights will not be permitted and separate aircraft will be deployed for the domestic and international portions of hub-and-spoke operations. “Naidu said India aims to achieve seamless connectivity between secondary and tertiary airports and international destinations. “While passengers will benefit from reduced travel times, the infrastructure that has been developed across the country will also be optimally utilized,” he said.The hub-and-spoke strategy aims to transform India from a source market providing traffic to foreign airlines and hubs into a “global transit hub, thereby enabling Indian airports to capture a significant portion of the transit traffic currently passing through foreign hubs”.“Currently, nearly 35 per cent of international passengers departing from India transit through foreign hub airports such as Dubai, London and Singapore. We aim to reverse this trend by developing globally competitive Indian hub airports such as Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai,” Naidu said.“Delhi Airport, for example, has an annual passenger throughput of more than 100 million, accounting for nearly 50% of the total passenger traffic in the northern region, and handles about 50,000 transfers every day, thus positioning itself as a natural hub airport,” the minister said.Naidu said the implementation of this hub-and-spoke model “will also enable airlines to deploy aircraft more efficiently for international operations while helping to ease congestion at major airports by decentralizing customs and immigration processes to spoke locations”.