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Booking a flight? Take a look at the busiest hours at India’s top airports
It is not between 0600 and 0700 hours in the morning as you would imagine.
The last seven days saw 19,940 domestic departures in India, against the approved 23,732 departures. Data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article, shows that Indian carriers are planning 21,081 departures in the first week of February. A spate of cancellations due to operational, commercial and weather related reasons leads to the drop in actual number of flights being operated versus planned.
One often thinks that the busiest times at the Indian airports would be between 0600 and 0700 hours in the morning, but it's not. Contrary to the popular belief that the morning hours are the busiest ones, the maximum departures in India are actually between 1500 and 1600 hours with 1,274 departures a week. The least? Between 0300 and 0400 hours, with just 70 weekly departures.
Which time bands have maximum flights?
The highest flights per week are in the 1500-1600 time band, followed by 1265 flights in the 0800 - 0900 hours. There are 1264 weekly flights mid-day, between 1200 hours to 1300 hours.
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The 0600 to 0700 hours time band comes in twelfth with just 1104 weekly departures, closely followed by the 0700 - 0800 hours with 1065 weekly departures.
In the evening hours, the most dense time band by departures is 1800 - 1900 hours with 1151 weekly departures and is the eight most busiest hour of the day. The 2000 - 2100 hour is the 14th most busiest hour with 1062 weekly departures, followed by the 1900 - 2000 hours is 15th most busiest with 1016 weekly departures.
How is it at the top airports?
At Delhi, which sees 3,273 weekly domestic departures, the busiest hour is 0800-0900 with 194 weekly departures, closely followed by the 0700-0800 hour with 190 weekly departures. The 1100- 1200 hour comes in next with 186 weekly departures. The busier hours are indicative of the hub status of the airport, which sees planes from across the country land early and take off between 0700 to 0900 hours.
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The 1100-1200 band is indicative of the first connections which are made from the morning bank of flights arriving from domestic and international destinations. Interestingly, the airport has no scheduled domestic flights between 0100 to 0200.
At Mumbai, the second busiest airport in the country, the 0600 to 0700 hour is the busiest as the base departures connect the financial capital to the country with 172 weekly domestic flights during this period. The least number of domestic flights at Mumbai are between 0300 - 0400 hours with just 7 weekly flights.
What about Bengaluru airport?
Bengaluru, the third busiest airport by domestic traffic in the country, mirrors Mumbai with the same peak hour with 170 weekly domestic departures between 0600 - 0700 and the least being seven weekly flights in the 0300 to 0400 hours. Hyderabad has no domestic departures between 0200 hours to 0400 hours and its peak is between 0600-0700 with 121 weekly departures.
Chennai has a tie between 0600-0700 hours and 1100-1200 hours as its peak, with 70 weekly domestic departures each. The airport does not see any domestic departure between 0100 to 0200 hours. Kolkata on the other hand has its peak between 0800 to 0900 with 80 weekly domestic departures. There are no domestic flights at Kolkata between 2300 hours to 0100 hours and again from 0300 hours to 0400 hours.
India still a metro-driven market
Every airport has constraints in terms of runway capacity. The peak hours are a mix of nature of the airport, the number of aircraft parked there for the night and capacity to get them out in the morning. At a large airport like Delhi, the lack of runway capacity to have as many departures at specific times leading to a more distributed departures.
However, in terms of numbers, the top 10 airports contribute to 64% of all departures. The schedule analysis shows 114 airports having scheduled commercial services. Only the top six airports, i.e. the metro airports have more than 1000 domestic departures a week.
Not many red-eyes
Only 18 airports have domestic departures which depart between 0000 to 0500 hours. Of this maximum, 150 weekly departures are at Delhi, followed by 147 at Mumbai and 140 at Pune. Bengaluru comes in fourth at 102 while Chennai comes in fifth at 51 weekly domestic departures. Interestingly a holiday destination like Goa has 21 weekly domestic departures which depart between midnight to 0500 hours.
There are only 766 such departures, which is a miniscule percentage of total planned domestic flights.
