Varanasi: Union Civil Aviation Minister K Ram Mohan Naidu on Thursday inaugurated India’s first “Easy Connect” flight from Varanasi’s Lal Bahadur Shastri International Airport, operationalizing a fresh hub-and-spoke aviation model. The framework is designed to eliminate terminal transfers, repetitive security checks, and baggage re-handling for international travellers originating from tier-II and tier-III Indian cities.
The maiden flight under this network, AI1111, departed Varanasi at 9:23 am, carrying passengers slated for onward international connections via Delhi to diverse global destinations including London, Frankfurt, Dubai, Colombo, Jeddah, Riyadh, Kathmandu, and Phuket. Under this modified operational setup, flyers can drop their luggage through to their final destination and complete international immigration clearances at their home airport. This allows them to transit through major domestic gateways like Delhi or Mumbai as international transfer passengers, reducing transit friction and bypassing overcrowded city-side terminals.
The central initiative aims to optimize regional airport infrastructure developed under the UDAN connectivity scheme while positioning major Indian metro airports as competitive international transit hubs. According to data shared by Air India Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director Campbell Wilson, nearly 20 million of the 25 million long-haul passengers travelling to and from India annually are connecting flyers. Crucially, around 17 million of these travellers currently route their journeys through competing foreign hubs in the Gulf or Southeast Asia rather than domestic terminals. Wilson emphasized that the system aims to reverse this multi-billion dollar traffic drainage by offering a familiar, streamlined transit experience within the domestic network.
The Civil Aviation Minister announced that the central government plans to expand this framework rapidly, bringing six additional cities under the hub-and-spoke model within the next six weeks. Air India has outlined a phased rollout for subsequent “Easy Connect” services, which will feature a dedicated “AI11XX” flight numbering system. The upcoming expansion will progressively link Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai, Patna, Vadodara, and Visakhapatnam to the primary international gateways in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru. Travellers utilizing this initial phase must be enrolled on the DigiYatra platform and upload their boarding passes before departure, though web check-ins and formal customs declaration counters will remain restricted to primary hubs during the initial rollout.
