Govt identifies 40 cities to link hub airports

New Delhi: India has identified 40 cities where air passengers would be able to benefit from liberalised airport immigration and cargo-screening rules, making it easier for them to travel overseas besides enabling faster cargo clearance, civil aviation secretary Samir Sinha said Tuesday.

"We have identified 40 such cities, where there is robust international travel demand, to be developed as spokes under the hub-and-spoke model," he said. "This will make international air travel convenient for flyers from these cities and will also lead to an increase in demand."

The liberalised rules will permit passengers from these cities to complete check-in and immigration formalities at their origin airport instead of the final point of departure.


They will then travel to a designated Indian hub such as Delhi or Mumbai and connect directly to their international flight without repeating immigration or customs procedures. Baggage will be transferred airside, without requiring passengers to collect and recheck it.

Air India has already started flights under this model from Varanasi and Amritsar, where passengers can travel to 27 international destinations through Delhi. Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Patna, Kochi, Vadodara, and Visakhapatnam are among the cities likely to be connected under the model in the near future.

The move is part of a broader push to develop Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru into international hubs. Hub airports aggregate passenger demand from an entire region and offer multiple direct flights to major global cities.

India is seeking to seize a rare opportunity to promote its airports as transit hub alternatives to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha amid travel disruptions in the Gulf due to the Iran war. Currently, 85% of India's connecting traffic travels via non-Indian hubs such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Singapore's Changi. Many Indian passengers travelling to North America also connect through European airports such as Frankfurt and London.

"This new model will help us to bring aviation sovereignty to India," said civil aviation minister Ram Mohan Naidu.