That order came hot on the heels of an order from India’s leading low-cost IndiGo airline for 500 new Airbus aircraft. In January 2024,Akasa Air,India’s newest airline,announced an order for 150 Boeing 737s. Alongside its commercial airlines,government and private industry are spending big on aviation infrastructure and now there is barely a corner of the country beyond the reach of air travel. If you want,you can take a one-hour flight from Delhi over the Himalayas and land at Leh,capital of Buddhist-infused Ladakh,and stagger off the plane into rarefied air at an altitude of 3256 metres.
The Australia connection
Two-way air traffic between Australia and India is also booming. In the 12 months to November 2023,387,000 Indian residents visited Australia,a rise of 40 per cent over the previous 12 months. In the 2022-23 financial year,435,000 Australian residents visited India. In the previous financial year the figure was 61,000.
Qantas halted its non-stop services between Australia and India in 2012 while Air India maintained the Australia-India connection,only pausing during the pandemic. On November 15,2021 Air India resumed its thrice-weekly Sydney-New Delhi service. Three weeks later,Qantas began operating a non-stop flight between Delhi and Sydney. In the week beginning December 15,2023,Air India began a thrice-weekly service between Melbourne and Mumbai. This is the first non-stop flight between any Australian city and India’s financial powerhouse since Qantas stopped its Mumbai flights more than a decade ago.
Air India operates a non-stop service between Sydney and Delhi but Qantas no longer does. Qantas flight 67 from Sydney makes a stop in Bengaluru,India’s IT capital. Passengers continuing to Delhi are carried aboard an IndiGo flight.
India’s largest budget airline,IndiGo takes a pared-back approach to customer service. Seats aboard the airline’s Airbus A321 all-economy flights have a pitch of 74 centimetres,five centimetres less than an economy-class seat aboard the Qantas Airbus A330-200 connecting flight. There are no inflight entertainment screens or power outlets. Anyone travelling from Sydney to the Indian capital with Qantas will have a better flying experience if they take the Qantas flight to Melbourne and connect with the non-stop flight from there to New Delhi.
Air terminals ramp up to meet demand
To cope with India’s appetite for air travel,new air terminals are being built at a rapid rate. Over the past decade,the number of commercial airports has doubled,from 74 to more than 140. Before the end of the decade the Indian Government wants to increase that number to 220. The country is currently in the middle of a two-year,$US12 billion ($18.5 billion) spend on new airports.