Kochi: Cochin International Airport Ltd announced its summer schedule which with effect from from March 26 till October 28, 2023. As per the schedule a total of 1,484 weekly with services to Mumbai, Banglore and Hyderabad are also enlisted.
31 airlines, of which 23 are foreign carriers, will operate 332 weekly departures to foreign locations under the summer CIAL timetable. With 63 weekly trips to foreign locations, Indigo tops the list, while Air India Express will only operate 44 weekly departures. Other well-known airlines with frequent weekly flights include SpiceJet (21), Air Arabia Abu Dhabi (20), AirAsia Berhad (18), Air Arabia (14), Emirates (14), Etihad (14), Oman Air (14), Saudi Arabian (14), and Singapore Airlines (14).
Only 51 weekly trips are scheduled for Abu Dhabi. Dubai is in second place with 45 operations coming from Kochi. While Air Asia Berhad will typically run 5 flights per day to Kuala Lumpur, Air Arabia Abu Dhabi will offer an extra 10 weekly frequency.
Although Indigo offers additional daily flights to Dammam and Bahrain, SpiceJet has announced new daily flights to Male and Riyadh. A new sector called Ras-Al-Khaimah was launched as a result of Indigo's daily flight to Ras-Al-Khaima.
Go First and Indigo will fly flights to Hyderabad, while Air India, Indigo, and Vistara will add daily flights to Mumbai. There will be daily flights from Indigo and Akasa Air to Bangalore. In the domestic market, CIAL's summer 2023 schedule lists 131 flights per week to Bangalore, 73 to Mumbai, 64 to Delhi, 55 to Hyderabad, 35 to Chennai, and 7 flights each to Agathi, Ahmedabad, Goa, Kannur, Kolkata, Pune, and Thiruvananthapuram. This results in a total of 742 arrivals and departures every week.
Notably, Indian aviation is going to see a surge in both terms of volume and a 17 per cent growth in the domestic sector. Cochin International Airport is preparing and designing strategies to adapt to that growth and contrives new route maps for the future, as we believe we will make Kochi a hub for air traffic in South India," as per official statement.
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