Ahmedabad, Sep 1 (IANS) Union Civil Aviation Minister Kinjarapu Ram Mohan Naidu on Tuesday inaugurated the hub-and-spoke international aviation operations from Ahmedabad’s Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport (SVPIA), marking the launch of a system that will allow international passengers from the Gujarat city to complete immigration and customs formalities before connecting through Delhi to overseas destinations.
The initiative, launched on Tuesday, places Ahmedabad as the first spoke airport under the new operational framework, with Delhi serving as the designated international hub.
The system is intended to make international travel more seamless for passengers originating from non-metro and regional airports by shifting immigration and customs clearance to the point of origin.
Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, Minister of State for Civil Aviation Murlidhar Mohol, and Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghvi attended the launch at Ahmedabad airport.
Chief Secretary Manoj Kumar Das, Civil Aviation Secretary Samir Kumar Sinha, Adani Airports Holding Limited director Jeet Adani and its CEO Arun Bansal were also present.
Under the hub-and-spoke arrangement, passengers travelling internationally from Ahmedabad will complete check-in, immigration and customs procedures at the spoke airport.
Their baggage will be transferred through to the final international destination, while passengers will not have to undergo immigration and customs clearance again at Delhi.
Flights from the spoke airport will carry both domestic and international passengers.
Boarding passes for domestic passengers will carry a ‘D’ indicator, while international passengers will receive an ‘I’ indicator for both the Ahmedabad-Delhi sector and their onward international flight.
Officials said the model is aimed at improving international access from Tier-II and Tier-III cities, reducing transit time and retaining more international passenger traffic within the Indian aviation network.
It is also expected to improve utilisation of existing infrastructure at major airports and strengthen Delhi’s role as an international hub.
The initiative forms part of the Union government’s wider international aviation hub strategy, which seeks to position India as a preferred aviation hub for Indian travellers by 2030 and as a leading global aviation hub by 2047.
The Ministry has cited the need to capture international transfer traffic that currently passes through foreign hubs.
Ram Mohan Naidu had earlier said that nearly 35 per cent of international passengers travelling from India transit through foreign hubs such as Dubai, London and Singapore.
He has described the hub-and-spoke model as a shift towards enabling passengers to begin international journeys from their home cities while connecting through Indian hubs.
The Ahmedabad launch is the first step in a proposed wider network.
The Ministry plans to bring additional international and customs airports under the framework, subject to operational readiness and stakeholder preparedness.
Twenty-two airports have been identified for phased operationalisation as spokes, including Cochin, Goa (Dabolim), Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Chandigarh, Lucknow, Surat, Pune, Thiruvananthapuram, Coimbatore, Kannur, Nagpur, Tiruchirappalli, Bagdogra, Vijayawada, Jaipur, Madurai, Mangaluru, Patna, Bhogapuram, Bhopal and Calicut.
Ministry of Civil Aviation teams have already visited the first 11 airports on the proposed list to assess their readiness to function as spokes.
The Ministry also conducted a virtual training and sensitisation programme for airlines and spoke-airport operators on July 7, followed by an in-person training programme for master trainers from participating airlines and high-potential spoke airports on July 16.
The government plans to eventually consider all non-metro airports designated as international or customs airports and having an operational Immigration Check Post for inclusion in the network, provided they meet operational and stakeholder-readiness requirements.
Alongside the expansion of spoke airports, the Ministry is working to add Mumbai and Bengaluru as hub airports, alongside Delhi, with the aim of expanding the hub-and-spoke ecosystem by October 15.
For airlines, the framework is expected to provide additional feeder traffic to international services operating from hub airports and improve utilisation of long-haul networks.
For passengers, the principal change will be the ability to complete border formalities at the originating spoke airport rather than repeating them during the international transfer.
The Ahmedabad operation is being implemented with the participation of airlines, the Airports Authority of India, CISF, immigration authorities, customs authorities and Delhi Airport.
–IANS
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