IndiGo, India’s largest carrier by fleet and domestic market share, will launch flights to Hindon, in the National Capital Region (NCR) from July 20,2025. IndiGo will become the fourth carrier to operate from Hindon, with the others being flyBig, Star Air and Air India Express. This will be 93rd domestic destination for IndiGo. There are 125 operational airports in India.
The airline will connect Hindon with Bengaluru (Double Daily), Kolkata (Daily), Mumbai (Daily), Ahmedabad (Daily), Patna (Daily), Varanasi (Daily), Chennai (six times a week), and Indore (Daily). This gets IndiGo to roughly the same number of departures as Air India Express, which operates to Bhubaneshwar, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Kolkata, Goa – Dabolim, Jaipur, Chennai, Patna and Varanasi from Hindon.
Hindon Airport is operated by the Indian Air Force and has seen fighter operations in the past. Today, it remains important for the protection of the Delhi area amongst other strategic reasons. The airport was opened up for civil operations in the middle of a multi million rupee revamp of Delhi Airport which had seen air traffic movements and passenger capacity go down. The airport let flights under RCS-UDAN, largely turboprop powered ones, be operated from Hindon. This would have helped Delhi Airport avoid flights which are under discount as well as slow down the air traffic movement. However, when Star Air joined the RCS-UDAN bandwagon, the jet powered planes started using Hindon, too. With Air India Express, things moved beyond the RCS-UDAN era. The operations started in early 2019, pre-COVID with operations from Air Heritage. Various media reports had indicated that Delhi Airport’s operator Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL), part of the GMR group, had filed a case against use of Hindon Airport. Subsequently, media reports also indicated that the case was withdrawn and another report indicating that the case has been refiled.
IndiGo’s choice for Hindon would have a multitude of reasons. Delhi Airports runway 10/28 is currently shut for ILS installation and there is a reduction in air traffic movements at Delhi for a period up to mid September. IndiGo has reduced a substantial number of flights from Delhi during this period. A part of this capacity can be fulfilled via Hindon operations. Air India Express has been chasing IndiGo lately by adding frequencies and trying to play the game which IndiGo has been playing for long. Air India Express has hitherto enjoyed monopoly at Hindon. IndiGo will also launch operations to Jewar when the airport is operational later this year and this is the testing ground for what works for East Delhi and what doesn’t.
Hindon is a very small civil enclave with two very small baggage belts and limited check-in counters. The Departure and Arrival areas are barely separated and within a few feet of each other. The apron is a few kilometers of bus ride away leading to delays in baggage handling and additional cost of ground transportation from aircraft to the terminal and vice versa. With as many departures, the airport will have extreme congestion at certain times of the day.
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Considering the strength of Delhi Airport, if Hindon will eat into any traffic, it will be that of NIA, Jewar and not Delhi. This would also bode well for Delhi Airport, since NIA, Jewar will take longer to breakeven. On the other hand, IndiGo’s presence further strengthens Hindon and any possibility of a case (if it exists) going ahead looks bleak.
For IndiGo, one wonders what took it so long to be present at Hindon. With Hindon serving Delhi area, the metro routes of Bengaluru – Hindon or Mumbai – Hindon currently look without Stretch and are along with Stretch being deployed on international routes before the 12 city pairs are complete within India, is also fairly indicative of the performance, no matter what the airline and its top leadership has been saying.
IndiGo has been restricted to just two ATRs at Delhi Airport. Will Hindon open up ATR operations for IndiGo and are there enough routes to make multiple trips a day which are not dependent on the feeder from across the country?
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