The country recorded 180 million domestic and international flyers last year, with market leader IndiGo witnessing a 36% year-on-year surge in first-time flyers, albeit on a low base. The carrier’s total traffic increased 28% YoY to 104.5 million.
About 10% passengers of low-cost Akasa Air, India’s newest airline which started flying in August 2022, are first-time flyers, said a person in the know, who did not wish to be identified.
Other airlines do not have a similar breakdown of flyers, industry executives said, reasoning that airlines cannot be sure whether a passenger is flying for the first time. However, they said, there is a palpable jump in the number of people flying for the first time.
The trend started during the Covid-19 pandemic, said Sanjay Kumar, an IndiGo veteran of more than 12 years who was last its chief strategy and revenue officer.
Rise in young flyers
“During Covid a lot of companies facilitated the transfer of their white-collar workers by air. That led to a surge in first-time flyers,” said Kumar, now president of InterGlobe Technology Quotient, a travel technology unit of IndiGo’s owner InterGlobe Enterprises.”Then, due to hybrid working, there was a lot of travel by young employees to their hometowns. Many of those first-time flyers have stuck to this mode of transport,” he said, attributing it largely to increasing disposable incomes.
The number of students that travelled by IndiGo increased 53% year-on-year to 1.38 million in 2023, highlighting that more youngsters took to the skies in the airline that controls 60% of the domestic aviation market.
New airports and routes, especially the ones connecting smaller towns, also contributed to the increase. Last year, three greenfield airports were operationalised in Mopa, Goa, Shivamogga in Karnataka and Rajkot in Gujarat. Five other airports were operationalised in Rourkela and Utkela in Odisha, Hollongi in Arunachal Pradesh, Cooch Behar in West Bengal and Jamshedpur in Jharkhand.
IndiGo launched about 25 domestic and international routes, connecting India’s smaller towns. Flyers from these towns are also mostly first-time flyers, according to the executives cited earlier.
For instance, India’s busiest airport, in Delhi, handled 26 million domestic passengers in 2023, of which 12% (3.12 million) were first-time flyers. This means about 90% (of the 30 million estimated by CAPA) came from other airports, a large chunk of which came from the smaller cities, said industry executives.
Travel companies also noticed this trend. For instance, travel portal Ixigo said flyers from smaller towns constituted 36% of its air bookings in 2022-23, up from 29% in 2014-15.
“One of the significant shifts that we are witnessing over our 75-year history is the entry of new and younger air travellers,” said Daniel D’Souza, president-holidays at SOTC Travel. “Since the pandemic, the average age of our customers has dropped by approximately 10 years. And what is noteworthy is that our 15-20% growth in this new segment is not restricted to metros, but emerging strongly from India’s tier 2-3 cities.”
In Gujarat, one of its key markets, the company is getting air travellers from Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara, he said, adding, “The government’s UDAN scheme has played a key role in ramping up regional connectivity and making air travel affordable for this cohort. Besides sheer convenience, the aspirational allure will continue to drive air travel, serving to fuel the growth engine of domestic tourism.”
Rajeev Kale, president at Holidays, MICE, Visa, Thomas Cook (India), said the company has seen a 25% increase in new customers.
With the rapid increase in first-time flyers, airports have launched services such as Delhi airport’s Atithya or passenger assistance service. Other efforts include placing detailed maps and floor plans across the passenger terminal, apart from an on-ground operations team to assist flyers.
A Mumbai airport executive said more and more first-time flyers are using the airport’s passenger assistance service, Pranaam.
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