While traditionally the longest flight has been Delhi-Port Blair from Air India, the group is more than doubling down its presence on the sector with 21 weekly flights — 14 operated by Air India and 7 by subsidiary Air India Express. Delhi-Port Blair is a distance of 2,481 km. IndiGo, the largest carrier in India, does not operate on this sector, which was an Air India monopoly, until its own subsidiary joined in.
For Air India, the shortest domestic flight is between Delhi and Dehradun. The shortest flight in India will be between Diu and Keshod, operated by the only government-owned airline in India, Alliance Air. This is a short hop of 95 km, which the airline covers in 30 minutes and operates thrice a week. Like this route, most of Alliance Air routes are monopoly, thanks to the airline operating a large part of its network under the RCS-UDAN scheme.
IndiGo, the largest airline in India, will see its Bengaluru-Srinagar-Bengaluru flight as its longest at 2,320 km, while its shortest flight is on the ATR 72-600 between Kochi and Kozhikode, where it operates once-a-day service taking 45 mins to traverse the distance of 119 km, shows data from Cirium, an aviation analytics company. IndiGo’s shortest flight on its Airbus fleet is the Jammu-Srinagar-Jammu sector where it operates 20 times a week. At 145 kilometres, the average block time is 40 minutes.
This sector is also the shortest sector for Air India Express, as well as SpiceJet. For the longest flight on the ATR fleet of IndiGo, there is a tie with Bhubaneshwar-Prayagraj and Kolkata-Raipur, both at 711 kilometres each and a block time of two hours on the turboprop aircraft. The longest ATR flight in India is operated by Alliance Air at 887 kilometres and a block time of two hours and forty-five minutes between Delhi and Bilaspur. That is quite a stretch for the plane traditionally meant for short hops.
SpiceJet also has a multi-fleet type, with the Q400s in operation. Its flights between Pune and Goa, covering 315 km, is the shortest on its Q400 network, while its twice-a-week service to Shillong from Delhi, covering 1508 km in three hours, is the longest Q400 flight, also the longest turboprop flight in India. On its Boeing network, the 1,794 km long flight to Bagdogra from Mumbai is its longest domestic flight. Akasa Air’s shortest flight is between Guwahati and Agartala, while its longest is between Guwahati and Mumbai. Both its shortest and longest flights touch Guwahati, a rare occurrence.
Regional carriers
India now has a couple of regional carriers with Alliance Air being one but operating across the country, while Star Air leads the charge among the scheduled commuter airline portfolio. Fly91, FLybig and IndiaOne also have services with a variety of aircraft comprising Embraers, ATRs, Cessnas and Twin Otters.
Amongst them, the longest route is by Star Air from Belgaum to Jaipur, which is operated by the E175s and is 1,220 km long, while the shortest is operated by IndiaOne Air between Vizag and Jeypore, which is a distance of 142 km.
International
The Druk Air flight from Bagdogra to Paro at 137 km is the shortest International flight from India, The shortest international flight by an Indian carrier is between Trichy and Jaffna, operated by IndiGo, deploying the ATR 72-600, while at 12,594 km, the San Francisco-Kolkata segment of the San Francisco-Bengaluru flight is the longest, which is operated by Air India. The technical stop at Kolkata is due to the airspace closure over Pakistan. The Mumbai-Newark flight, again by Air India, at 12,560 km, is the longest if technical stops are not considered. The longest international flight by a foreign carrier is operated by United Airlines from Newark to Delhi, which covers a distance of 11,783 km.
The author, Ameya Joshi, is an aviation analyst.
