India’s international aviation map is expanding beyond Delhi and Mumbai, but the deeper shift is not simply the addition of new routes. It is a contest over where international passengers begin their journeys, where they change planes and which airports capture the economic value of those connections. The choice by Vietnamese carrier Sun Phu Quoc Airways to select Ahmedabad for its first scheduled Indian route, alongside Vietnam Airlines’ planned service from Hanoi, illustrates how smaller metropolitan markets are becoming strategically important to foreign and Indian airlines.
The opportunity is large. Indian airports handled 81.13 million international passengers in 2025, according to the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Air India says nearly 25 million passengers travel long-haul to and from India each year, of whom close to 20 million are connecting passengers. Around 17 million of those travellers currently transfer through foreign hubs rather than Indian airports. These figures position international connectivity as more than a question of passenger convenience. They point to a competition for traffic, airport activity and the role India’s own hubs will play in the country’s aviation system.
For years, the country’s international aviation network has been concentrated around its largest gateways. Delhi and Mumbai have had the greatest combination of passenger demand, airline presence and onward connectivity. But airlines serving India do not need to rely only on these airports to access the country’s travelling public. By adding flights from cities such as Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam, foreign carriers can collect passengers closer to their homes and feed them into overseas hub networks.
This model changes the geography of the journey. A passenger from an Indian city without a direct service to the final destination can travel first to an international hub such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Doha, then continue onwards. The first flight may be short or regional, but the commercial value of the journey lies in the connecting passenger who uses the foreign airline’s wider network. For the traveller, the attraction may be a shorter trip to the first airport, a competitive fare or access to destinations not served directly from the home city.
Ahmedabad offers a clear example of this emerging competition. Sun Phu Quoc Airways is scheduled to begin five weekly flights between Phu Quoc and Ahmedabad on December 2. The carrier plans to increase the service to daily flights from February 2027. Vietnam Airlines is scheduled to begin four weekly flights between Hanoi and Ahmedabad on November 3, using Airbus A321 aircraft. The airline’s India network will then cover 25 weekly round trips across seven routes and seven destinations, according to the report.
Ahmedabad already has international services from airlines including Vietjet, Thai Airways and Air Arabia. The new flights will create additional links between Gujarat and Southeast Asia, but the existence of a route does not by itself establish whether it will become commercially successful. Passenger demand, fares, schedules, aircraft utilisation and onward connections will determine how effectively the services operate. The expansion nevertheless shows that international airlines increasingly see value in entering India through markets beyond the traditional metropolitan gateways.
The same pattern can be seen elsewhere. Scoot, the low-cost airline of Singapore Airlines, serves Amritsar, Coimbatore, Tiruchirappalli, Thiruvananthapuram and Visakhapatnam, in addition to Chennai. Air Arabia’s Indian network includes Thiruvananthapuram, Ahmedabad, Kochi and other cities. Amritsar has direct international links to Doha, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Singapore, with services from airlines including Qatar Airways, Malaysia Airlines, AirAsia and Scoot.
These cities are not interchangeable. Their passenger markets can be shaped by different combinations of leisure travel, business trips and visits to family and friends abroad. A city with a large overseas-connected population may generate demand for one set of destinations, while a manufacturing or services centre may produce another. The report does not provide route-level passenger or load-factor data, so it does not establish which of these markets is strongest. It does show, however, that airlines are testing a broader range of demand centres rather than treating international travel as a service available only from the biggest metros.
For Indian airlines, the strategic problem is different. Foreign carriers can use hubs outside India to connect passengers to their global networks. Indian airlines want more of those passengers to transfer through Indian airports instead. Air India’s Easy Connect programme is an effort to make that domestic-hub option more convenient for travellers starting outside the largest gateways.
Air India launched Easy Connect from Varanasi on June 25, 2026, before expanding it to Amritsar on July 28 and Ahmedabad on September 1. The programme allows passengers at participating airports to check in through to their final destinations and complete immigration formalities before connecting through Delhi. They do not have to recheck their baggage during the transfer, according to Air India.
The administrative detail is important because the appeal of a connecting airport depends on more than the number of destinations listed on an airline schedule. Passengers also consider whether the transfer is straightforward, whether baggage moves reliably, how much time the connection requires and whether the fare is competitive. By allowing passengers to complete specified formalities before the domestic leg to Delhi, Easy Connect is designed to reduce friction for travellers who begin their journeys in cities with fewer direct international flights.
From Ahmedabad, Air India says two daily Easy Connect flights to Delhi provide onward connections to 26 international destinations. The airline plans to extend the programme to Goa, Guwahati, Kochi, Patna, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam. If implemented across these cities, the model would connect more domestic catchments to an Indian international network without requiring every city to support direct long-haul services.
This distinction is central to understanding the current phase of India’s aviation expansion. More international services from non-metro cities will not necessarily produce direct flights from each city to London, New York or Sydney. The more immediate opportunity may be a reliable connection through an established domestic or foreign hub. That makes the quality of the transfer network as important as the number of direct routes.
The competition therefore operates on two levels. Foreign airlines are extending their reach into Indian cities to bring passengers into hubs such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Doha. Indian airlines are trying to use airports such as Delhi to retain more of the connecting journey within India. The passenger may make the same broad international trip in either case, but the airport where the transfer takes place determines which airline network carries the next leg and which aviation ecosystem benefits from the traffic.
The scale of the connecting market gives this contest its significance. If nearly 20 million of the 25 million annual long-haul passengers identified by Air India are connecting travellers, the location of those transfers is a structural issue for the country’s aviation network. The reported figure of approximately 17 million passengers transferring through overseas hubs suggests that Indian airlines and airports are competing for an already established travel behaviour, rather than waiting for an entirely new market to emerge.
At the same time, the figures need to be read carefully. The report does not provide a breakdown of the 81.13 million international passengers by airport, city, route or purpose of travel. Nor does it establish how many passengers using the new services will be connecting travellers as opposed to final-destination passengers. The numbers indicate the scale of the opportunity, but they do not demonstrate that every new route will succeed or that traffic will shift automatically from foreign to Indian hubs.
For cities outside the traditional aviation centres, the implications extend beyond airport access. Direct international services can reduce the need for residents to travel first to Delhi or Mumbai, while convenient connections can widen access to overseas destinations without requiring a new long-haul route from every city. The benefits will depend on schedule quality, fare levels, airport capacity and the ability of airlines to sustain services after the initial launch period.
The institutional challenge is to align airline strategy with airport operations and passenger processing. A route announcement is only one part of international connectivity. Domestic feeder flights, immigration procedures, baggage handling and onward schedules must function as a coordinated system. Air India’s programme addresses some of that transfer process, while foreign airlines are approaching the same passenger through their overseas hubs.
India’s aviation map is therefore being redrawn not only by new destinations but by new connecting arrangements. Ahmedabad’s upcoming services, the spread of international flights to cities such as Amritsar and Visakhapatnam, and Air India’s planned expansion of Easy Connect all point to a system in which the first airport in an international journey may increasingly be located outside the largest metros.
What remains uncertain is which routes will achieve durable demand and how much of India’s connecting traffic can be retained by domestic hubs. The next milestones are the scheduled launch of the Hanoi–Ahmedabad service on November 3, the Phu Quoc–Ahmedabad service on December 2, and the planned expansion of Sun Phu Quoc Airways’ Ahmedabad operation to daily flights from February 2027. Those developments will show whether the new aviation geography can convert network ambition into sustained passenger movement.
