NEW DELHI: India is finalising its hub-and-spoke policy of flying passengers between small towns and rest of the world via hub like Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The move comes amid Air India and IndiGo’s massive orders for wide body aircraft; the coming of age of Indian hub airports that are gearing up for domestic-to-international and vice-versa transfers; and the biggest hubs of international travel to and from India in the Gulf like Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha facing uncertainty over when the resume pre Feb 28 operations. Union aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu visited and secretary Samir Sinha visited the upcoming hub at Delhi’s IGI Airport — India’s busiest airport — on Thursday to fine-tune the policy and begin its implementation in right earnest.
Sinha is tackling what is the biggest pain point for international to domestic passengers — they need to collect their baggage on the port of arrival in India; clear customs and then then check-in again for the domestic connecting flight. “baggage for both inbound and outbound international passengers will be transferred seamlessly through airside operations at the hub airport, eliminating the need for passenger intervention,” the aviation ministry says about the change under the new hub-and-spoke policy.
Passengers flying out of India, say from Lucknow to Delhi to London, on the other hand, can through check-in their bag at Lucknow itself if both their flights are on the same airline or alliance’ code share partner carriers.
The operating procedure for domestic to international transfers:
“Under the hub-and-spoke model, passengers arriving from various smaller cities will be consolidated in a coordinated manner and routed through major hub airports such as Delhi for onward international connections. At the spoke (smaller origin) airport, passengers will be issued two separate boarding passes, clearly marked with ‘D’ (domestic) and ‘I’ (international) indicators,” the aviation ministry said in a statement.
“Customs and immigration formalities for outbound passengers will be completed at the first point of exit from the country, which will be the spoke airport, and passengers on such outbound journeys will not have access to customs declaration facilities during transit,” it said.
23/04/2026 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
To Read the News in full at Source, Click the Headline
0 Post a Comment:
Post a Comment