Passengers flying abroad from non-metro cities may no longer need to navigate crowded international terminals or collect and re-check baggage during transit, with Air India on Thursday launching the country’s first ‘Easy Connect’ flight under the government’s new hub-and-spoke aviation model.
Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu inaugurated the maiden service from Varanasi’s Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, marking the beginning of a system designed to allow travellers to start their international journey from their home city while completing most formalities before reaching major hubs such as Delhi or Mumbai.
The first flight, AI1111, departed Varanasi at 9.23 am with passengers travelling onwards via Delhi to international destinations including Dubai, Colombo, Jeddah, Riyadh, Kathmandu and Phuket.
Under the new model, passengers can check in their baggage through to their final international destination at their originating airport and complete immigration formalities before departure. This allows them to transit through Delhi without collecting baggage, undergoing fresh immigration checks or repeating airport procedures.
Officials said the initiative aims to simplify international travel for passengers from tier-II and tier-III cities that do not have direct overseas connections, while also encouraging more travellers to use Indian airports as transit hubs instead of foreign airports in the Gulf or Southeast Asia.
Addressing the launch event, Naidu said the hub-and-spoke framework would fundamentally change the way Indians travel internationally by allowing passengers to begin their journey from their hometown and connect seamlessly to destinations across the world.
He said India’s aviation infrastructure had expanded rapidly over the last 12 years, with the number of operational airports increasing from 74 in 2014 to more than 160 today. The minister also announced that six more airports would be brought under the Easy Connect model within the next six weeks.
Air India said Varanasi is the first spoke city to be integrated into the system and more cities will follow in phases over the coming months.
The airline plans to roll out Easy Connect services from Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Patna, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam, connecting them with its major hubs in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.
Air India Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Campbell Wilson said millions of Indians travelling overseas continue to transit through foreign airports despite India’s growing aviation market.
According to the airline, nearly 25 million passengers travel long-haul to and from India every year and around 20 million of them are connecting travellers. Of these, nearly 17 million currently use overseas hubs rather than Indian airports for onward international connections.
Wilson said the Easy Connect model aims to reverse that trend by allowing travellers from cities such as Varanasi and Amritsar to begin and complete much of their international journey within India’s aviation network.
Air India said flight AI1111 from Varanasi to Delhi currently offers onward connections to 17 international destinations within four hours of arrival in the national capital, including London, Rome, Milan, Frankfurt, Zurich, Dubai, Riyadh and Jeddah.
Passengers travelling under the new framework will, however, be required to enrol on DigiYatra and upload their boarding passes before departure in order to use the seamless transit facility. Customs declarations and web check-in facilities will not be available at spoke airports during the initial phase of the rollout.
