Through the Looking Glass

The Economic Times By Jayant Sinha & Akhilesh Tilotia Providing regional air connectivity is an important policy goal for the government. Such services deliver a host of benefits by fulfilling latent consumer demand for convenient travel, making businesses and trade more efficient, unlocking India’s tourism potential, enabling fast medical service and promoting national integration. Moreover, building connections to tier-2 and tier-3 cities also generates powerful network effects with many regional passengers transferring on to the national aviation network between tier-1cities. The Udan (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) programme is designed to jump start the regional aviation market by improving the profitability of under-developed regional routes. Udan is a market-based policy intervention that builds on similar programmes in the US, Canada and Australia. It is also consistent with universal service approaches established for other network-based services such as railways and te

Business Standard As the aviation market in India deepens, the creation of hubs for regional connectivity, international travel, mega- tourist destinations and freight connectivity will ensure the flow of more foreign Jayant Sinha & Akhilesh Tilotia Airports and airlines share a symbiotic relationship. Large airlines make big airports their hubs: The airport gets a dedicated anchor bringing in passenger footfalls and the airline builds out a full “hub-and-spoke” model centred around this airport. Typically, large airlines operate out of hubs: Such airports are among the largest in the world. Flag carriers like Emirates (244 planes in the sky in calendar year 2015), Etihad (121 planes) and Singapore Airlines (117 planes) have made their home city of Dubai (which handled 78 million passengers in CY2015), Abu Dhabi (23 million) and Singapore (55 million) their hubs. Large commercial airlines such as American (1,064 planes) or Delta (891 planes) hub at Dallas (66 million) and