Kempegowda International Airport offering seven new routes

Bengaluru: The Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), operated by Bangalore International Airport Ltd, will expand its flight offerings with the launch of seven new routes and addition of two airlines in the winter schedule, beginning from Sunday. The five-month schedule will be in effect till March 30, 2019.

According to an official press release, Phuket is the new international destination, with GoAir offering a direct connection to the southern Thai province. With this, Bengaluru will now connect to 82 destinations 53 domestic and 29 international.

Three airlines Indigo, Air India and GoAir will launch additional flights from Bengaluru to eight existing international destinations. Indigo will operate daily flights to Male, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Kathmandu. Air India will fly to Bangkok and London. Go Air will operate its flights to Male. Air India Express will launch a round-trip flight to Singapore, flying four times a week, from Monday.

The new domestic destinations are Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Udaipur (Spice Jet), Udaipur and Prayagraj (erstwhile Allahabad) (Indigo); Aizawl via Guwahati (Jet Airways) and Kolhapur (Alliance Air).

The new Airlines set to make their Bengaluru debut are Turkish Cargo and Air India Express. Turkish Cargo, one of the fastest growing air freight services, will operate two flights a week, flying between Istanbul and Bengaluru one via Colombo and the other via Daman from October 31. A total of 13 Cargo Airlines, including two domestic and

With the start of these schedules, KIA is expected to achieve 744 air traffic movements (ATMS) per day (659 domestic and 85 international). It is expected to progressively achieve 766 ATMs per day (675 domestic and 91 international). In these five months, the hourly runway capacity will increase to 40 movements per hour from the existing 38.  During the recently concluded Summer Schedule, the airport recorded an average of 691 daily movements (613 domestic and 78 international).

The average international ATMs for winter 2018-19 is expected to grow at 17 per cent  over summer 2018, while domestic movements are expected to achieve a growth of 10 per cent. The overall growth forecast for the forthcoming schedule is pegged at 11 per cent.