The Center on Monday raised domestic airlines’ ’Winter Schedule 2023’ or planned flight operations per week by 8.16% on a year-on-year basis.
Accordingly, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has approved slots for 23,732 flight departures per week, more than the 21,941 allocated during the winter schedule in 2022.
On a sequential basis, the ‘Winter Schedule 2023’ has 3.60% more flights than the 22,907 departures per week approved for the ‘Summer Schedule 2023’.
The ‘Winter Schedule’ is effective from October 29, 2023, until March 30, 2024.
Notably, more flights and increased capacity are expected to tame high ticket prices.
According to DGCA, the ‘Winter Schedule 2023’ of scheduled Indian carriers was finalised after the slot conference meeting held in September 2023.
On Monday, the regulator said that the final slots clearances had been received from “respective airport operators on the eGCA portal”.
“It has been observed that there are 23,732 departures per week that have been finalized to or from 118 airports as per WS 23, compared to 22,907 departures per week from 110 airports in ‘Summer Schedule 2023’,” the DGCA said.
“Out of these 118 airports, Bhatinda, Jaisalmer, Ludhiana, Nanded, Shivmoga, Salem, Utkela, Hindon, and Ziro are the new airports proposed by the scheduled airlines, whereas operations from Gondia airport have not been proposed in ‘Winter Schedule 2023’.”
As per ‘WS23’, IndiGo had the highest number of flights approved under the schedule.
Under the approved schedule, IndiGo had 13,119 flights per week approved, followed by Air India at 2,367, SpiceJet at 2,132, Vistara at 1,902, and AirAsia India (AIX Connect) at 1,457.
In addition, Alliance Air had an approved flight strength of 914, Akasa Air at 790, Air India Express at 483, Star Air at 247, FlyBig at 191, IndiaOne Air at 112, and Pawan Hans at 18.