Originally Posted by
FRatSTN
Indigo I believe were close to launching at STN before Covid hit but were planning on running A321neos with a potential stopover. That plan was then dropped in favour of securing wide body aircraft I believe. I agree with that model they'd probably favour LGW, especially with Air India now established there too.
I do think though the Amritsar service by Air India was well suited to STN in the time it operated. Loads were good and as a heavily VFR targeted route, STN was geographically better placed to that market than LGW. But since they were moving most of their point-to-point routes to India out of LHR it makes total sense why they consolidated at LGW. If the slot situation ever gets to a point at LGW that they cannot add additional capacity such as Bengaluru that they may like, I wouldn't be surprised then to maybe see the Amritsar route go back to STN.
Rather somewhat ironically, the vast majority of the VFR passengers frequenting AI's LGW-ATQ route hail from the Punjab region in the Northwest of India and are heavily concentrated in the area around LHR. Therefore, I'm not too sure that getting from the area around LHR to STN is any easier than getting from there to LGW.
Of the four routes AI has shifted from LHR to LGW, the one best suited to the LGW catchment is the one to COK (Cochin/ Kochi), the most populous city and the commercial centre of the southwestern Indian state of Kerala, also known locally as the Pearl of the Arabian Sea. Many of the VFR passengers frequenting this route actually live and work (mainly in the health care / carehome sectors) relatively close to LGW. And unlike ATQ and GOX (and somewhat similar to AMD), COK isn't all-VFR / a mix of VFR and leisure (mainly Brits with no roots on the Subcontinent); it also has potential to attract a substantial number of business passengers if AI can up the frequency from the current 3× weekly service to daily (or near-daily, at least 5× weekly) and gets the service proposition right which unfortunately hasn't been the case with AI in the past (incl. giving the 787-8s currently serving the route revamped interiors with all the new AI products and positive staff attitudes to match). In this context, some Indian media outlets have reported that AI is going to increase frequencies on LGW-COK from 3× weekly to 4× weekly during the forthcoming summer timetable period, although this has so far nowhere been confirmed by AI (unlike LGW-BLR, where they'd already loaded the schedules on their website but never opened reservations). LGW-AMD could be a similar story to LGW-COK if AI get the frequency and service proposition right as in addition to the currently targeted VFR market - with many of these passengers actually living near LHR as well (similar to the ATQ target market), however, there also being a substantial number of passengers living in Crawley, West Sussex, right on LGW's doorstep (unlike the ATQ target market, where very, very few passengers live in the area around LGW). Similar to COK, AMD is the commercial centre of the western Indian state of Gujarat, one of the most developed in India and home to some of India's biggest industrialists and the birth place and original home of India's PM Narendra Modi. Gujarat is also the centre of India's diamond industry (concentrated in and around the city of Surat, one of three centres of the global diamond trade (the others being Amsterdam and Antwerp, respectively)).
l agree that if AI can no longer expand its LGW presence, they'll probably give STN another look. But, by that time, I'd expect AI to have up to three global hubs in India up and running - at DEL, BOM (probably the upcoming airport at Navi Mumbai / New Bombay due to open later this year rather than the existing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Airport as the latter is operated as a single-runway airport like LGW at the moment which makes it difficult to operate a functioning and internationally competitive hub-and-spoke system based around multiple daily banks of flights) and either BLR or HYD, the airports serving Bengaluru and Hyderabad, respectively, the two main IT and high tech centres in the Deccan peninsula of southern India (with my money being on BLR as the bigger and more developed of the two). Given LHR's extremely tight slot situation and my expectation that AI would need to emulate EK if they're serious about implementing a globally competitive hub-and-spoke strategy in India, i.e., serving multiple LON area airports simultaneously as spokes feeding the aforementioned upcoming hubs (like EK feeds its DXB global hub from LON via LHR, LGW and STN simultaneously), in this scenario I'd expect AI to feed at least its DEL and BOM (Navi Mumbai) hubs from both LHR and LGW simultaneously. If then, given a by then extremely tight slot situation at LGW similar to the current slot situation at LHR (especially, if neither LGW's current proposal to bring its northern standby / emergency runway into regular use nor LHR's plan for a fully independent, full-length third runway eventually see the light of day), AI decides to make STN its third LON area airport, I'd expect them to give serious consideration to start flying from STN to BOM (Navi Mumbai), given close links between some of the bio / life sciences companies in Cambridge's Silicon Fenn (for whom STN is their local airport) and their counterparts in the western Indian state of Maharashtra clustered in and around both Mumbai (Maharashtra's commercial centre and state capital) and nearby Pune). Other Indian cities AI could consider serving from STN are MAA (Madras / Chennai), the commercial and political centre of the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu, another southern Indian IT / high tech and automotive industry centre, and CCU (Calcutta / Kolkata), the commercial and political centre of the northeastern Indian state of West Bengal and the original capital during the Raj, with many of the VFR target market passengers living in London's East End, for whom STN is the most convenient airport. Another aspect in support of AI considering making STN their third LON area airport is if AI wanted to operate all-cargo flights from LON as well as STN is the only LON area airport where airlines can still obtain slots for pure cargo flights (discounting LTN as its relatively short runway is unsuitable for operating non-stop widebody flights to / from India without payload restrictions).