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Three Italian passengers boarded a Munich flight without immigration in India. What the hub-and-spoke rules say
The lapse occurred on September 4. A look at the hub-and-spoke framework that runs from Varanasi, Amritsar and Ahmedabad, and what its SOP requires.
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Three Italian passengers, earlier this month, travelled from Amritsar to Delhi and boarded a Lufthansa flight to Munich on September 4 without completing immigration formalities in India, an incident that has drawn attention to the government’s hub-and-spoke framework.
The Ministry of Home Affairs had called an urgent meeting on the September 4 lapse on Tuesday evening, but it was called off hours earlier. The Union ministry of civil aviation (MoCA) also issued a show-cause notice to Air India over the incident on September 12.
The hub-and-spoke framework came into operation in June and changes where international travellers complete their departure formalities when flying abroad from smaller Indian cities.
Here's what we know about the model and its SOP.
The incident
The three passengers flew from Amritsar to Delhi on September 4 and later boarded a Lufthansa flight to Munich. They did not undergo immigration at Delhi before departure.
MoCA issued a show-cause notice on September 12 to Air India chief executive officer Campbell Wilson, seeking an explanation on alleged procedural lapses. The airline had not replied to the notice till Monday evening, HT reported.
Air India and Lufthansa have an interline partnership, which allows passengers to book connecting flights between different airlines on a single itinerary.
Neither Air India nor MoCA has commented on the matter so far.
The hub-and-spoke framework
MoCA introduced the framework to allow passengers flying abroad from tier-II and tier-III Indian cities to complete their departure formalities at their home airport, rather than at a larger transit airport.
The ministry issued a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the model in late April 2026, and Air India began the first 'Easy Connect' service, flight AI 1111 from Varanasi, on June 25, according to a government release. Amritsar was added on July 28 and Ahmedabad on September 1, taking the network to three 'spoke' airports. Delhi is the only operational ‘hub’ for now.
At the Ahmedabad launch, civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu said the government plans to bring 22 more airports into the network in the current phase, including Surat, according to a Press Information Bureau (PIB) release.
Minister of State Murlidhar Mohol also told the Rajya Sabha on July 20 that further expansion of the model would proceed in phases, based on commercial viability, passenger demand and airport infrastructure.
The government's ambition, it has said, is to make India the preferred aviation hub for Indian travellers by 2030 and a leading global aviation hub by 2047. According to the ministry, it projects the creation of approximately 0.4 million direct and indirect jobs, and around $30 billion in additional GDP by 2030.
The SOP
The SOP, as described in PIB releases and reported by HT in April, sets out the model's core requirements.
Both legs of a hub-and-spoke journey, the spoke-to-hub domestic flight and the onward international flight, are designated as international operations.
Immigration and customs clearance take place at the 'spoke' airport, which is the first point of departure. At the 'hub', the passenger may proceed directly to the onward international flight. Baggage moves airside at the 'hub', without the passenger having to collect and recheck it.
Spoke-to-hub flights can carry a mix of domestic passengers travelling to the hub and international passengers travelling further.
To keep the two groups distinct, the SOP requires separate physical boarding cards, one marked 'D' for the domestic sector and one marked 'I' for the international onward sector, a PIB release said. Domestic and international passengers must be segregated immediately upon disembarkation at the hub, through dedicated channels.
Hub-to-spoke flights, in the inbound direction, will carry only international passengers. This part of the model is not yet in service. Air India said on July 28 that it plans to begin inbound Easy Connect operations from Amritsar within two months.
Web check-in is not offered for hub-and-spoke passengers.
What the inquiry could examine
Boarding passes for both the Amritsar-Delhi flight and the onward Lufthansa flight to Munich were issued at Amritsar, government sources said. They told PTI that the two flights did not fall under Air India's hub-and-spoke arrangement, and the three passengers were therefore required to exit through the arrivals area in Delhi and complete immigration before boarding the Lufthansa flight.
Instead, the sources said, the passengers were taken to the international transfer area at Delhi and boarded the flight to Munich without going through the immigration counter.
The government has not yet made a formal statement on where in the chain the failure occurred, or on which specific SOP provisions are under scrutiny. Those questions are what the government would have to establish.
