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The country's top airports would see eight per cent growth in daily departures, with airlines adding flights this summer.
Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports, which together handle over half of the Indian air traffic, handled 1,114 departures daily in the winter schedule. This will rise to 1,203 in summer.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation approves the schedules of both domestic and foreign airlines; the summer schedule takes effect next week. The regulator, however, is yet to announce the approved schedules.
Domestic traffic grew 9.7 per cent in 2014 over the previous year and January saw a growth of 21 per cent in domestic traffic, fuelled by discount offers.
IndiGo, the largest domestic airline by market share, is introducing a Kolkata-Dimapur flight and additional ones from Delhi to Kolkata, Varanasi and Indore, plus flights between Mumbai and Indore and Mumbai and Raipur.
Jet Airways is enhancing flights from Mumbai and Delhi, including new services on routes being operated by Vistara. These include flights from Delhi to Guwahati, Pune and Hyderabad.
GoAir said it was adding eight flights. SpiceJet, which had cut its schedule to 210 daily flights, expects to increase these to 280, with a plan for more planes.
IndiGo has 93 planes and expects three Airbus A320s over the next few months. Air India is taking another four Airbus A320 and three Boeing 787 planes. AirAsia and Vistara will also be adding capacity.
"While most domestic carriers have plans to increase frequencies on domestic routes, Vistara has given a plan for pan-India operations. The airline is also planning to introduce flights to northeastern airports and to a few metro airports in southern and western India. Similarly, AirAsia India will introduce its maiden flights out of Delhi and plans to fly to non-metro stations. These two airlines will be the major contributor of route expansions out of here," a Delhi airport spokesperson said.
Bengaluru will have a new service to Kuwait, by Kuwait Airways, and a new domestic flight to Jodhpur. Vistara and Air Pegasus will commence services to Bengaluru, a spokesperson said.
"Growth in air traffic has encouraged the airlines to increase capacity and almost all carriers are planning an increase in frequencies this summer," said S G Kishore, chief executive at Hyderabad airport.
