Bangkok, Male, Phuket, Colombo – How IndiGo rejigged its Mumbai network to connect to Amsterdam and Manchester – NetworkThoughts

In March this year, IndiGo announced its intentions to operate to Manchester and Amsterdam with thrice a week flights each from India. While the announcement remained conspicuously silent on the origin point in India, it was largely believed to be New Delhi, IndiGo’s largest hub. Things changed thereon as the ghastly terrorist attack on civilians at Pahalgam in April led to escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan, leading to the closure of Pakistani airspace for Indian registered aircraft and those operated by airlines in India even on wet or damp lease. The subsequent action taken by Indian armed forces in the form of “Operation Sindoor” led to Pakistan extending the NOTAM for another month for closure of airspace. When the airline eventually announced the schedule, the point of origin was Mumbai and not Delhi. The airline would fly thrice a week on Mumbai – Manchester, a route last served by Jet Airways and thrice a week to Amsterdam from Mumbai, a route served daily by KLM (a partner airline), while Air India serves Amsterdam from Delhi, with daily flights. 

At Delhi and Mumbai, IndiGo is constrained by multi-terminal operations unlike Air India which has the entire group operations under one roof. At both the airports, the interminal transfer is tedious, requires longer connection times amongst other issues. 

Bangkok, Phuket, Krabi, Colombo, Male

The airline, in quick succession, rejigged part of its international network from Mumbai to ensure that it connects both ways to Manchester and Amsterdam. This involved adding a flight each to Bangkok and Phuket to connect to this new long haul network which it is building and changing rotations and thus timings of its flights to Colombo and Male. 

There are a few ways in which connectivity can be established. The first is lower utilisation and an example of this is Air India’s flights to Kuala Lumpur which is parked in Kuala Lumpur for the night and returns the next morning. While lower on utilisation, it ensures that it connects both ways to the European bank of the airline. The second is having two (or more) frequencies, where in one flight caters to the onwards connection from hub and another to feed to the European bank. Air India has an example here to, where it operates double daily to Phuket from Delhi, helping give good two way connection to Europe. The third is what is known as a “W” pattern in industry parlance and what IndiGo is opting for. The aircraft operates as HUB-Spoke-BBB-Spoke-HUB. Another Air India example here is its past operations on Mumbai – Singapore – Chennai – Singapore – Mumbai. Typically, in a W operation, the hub timings are considered for connection and the smaller leg could be compromised on timings to ensure that one flight can help connect the widebody bank without a need to add a flight, which could be due to lack of bilateral rights or lack of market.

Let’s look at what the airline is doing,

Flights to Manchester depart at 0425 hours and to Amsterdam at 0520 hours. The arrivals are at 0155 and 0225 hours respectively.

The airline has linked a few flights to each other to ensure that timings cater to the connectivity. 

1. Krabi

The airline’s flights to Krabi were the only ones which were connecting both ways to Amsterdam and Manchester. The airline operated flights to Krabi as Mumbai – Krabi – Bengaluru – Krabi – Mumbai, a “W” operation and thus had connectivity.

2. Colombo and Male

Borrowing a leaf from Krabi, the airline has changed rotations to Colombo and Male to operate as Mumbai – Male – Kochi – Male – Mumbai and same for Colombo as Mumbai – Colombo – Bengaluru – Colombo – Mumbai. The revised timings are,

3. Bangkok and Phuket

The airline has added new flights to these two destinations, in addition to changing the timings of its older flights for Bangkok. This makes the two way connectivity possible and additionally ensures that there is spacing between the two flights, which it now operates.

Network Thoughts

For a student of airline network planning, such changes are an opportunity to learn and understand the quick fixes. However, the interdependent airline network comes up with challenges. The change in timings could hamper the Origin – Destination traffic if it does not cater to the timings needed for such traffic. Let’s take Male for example. The airline had timings which aligned to hotel check-in and check-out timings, while the newer timings make it a 0700 hours arrival into Maldives, but the return is at 2225 hours, a time for which one either ends up paying a day’s extra fare or ends up in Male city earlier because the boat and sea plane services end earlier. 

However, airline network planning has no right or wrong things.IndiGo seems to be prioritising connections over Origin – Destination traffic, something can be challenging. However, IndiGo has the cost leadership to make this work. 

What happens from here on? The airline either develops a bank of flights to Europe at similar timings to ensure that the feeder traffic can feed to more than two flights and thus takes helps sustain at this hour of the day, or it identifies the optimum mix of connections and Origin – Destination traffic and rejigs the timings again. 

A back of the envelope calculation shows that the airline could see more inductions in September and then October. IndiGo has signed up for a total of six planes from Norse Atlantic. My hunch is that the airline would could increase frequency on existing routes if they are doing well before expanding to the others. It has already announced Copenhagen and London, with six planes and half a week of operation, it can potentially add 12 destinations, but it won’t. 

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