Thanks To Mahakumbh, Prayagraj Is Now One Of India's Top Airports

(MENAFN- Live Mint) Prayagraj is hosting the historic Mahakumbh, a once-in-144-year phenomenon this year. The Mahakumbh started last month and ends with the Shahi Snan on February 26, 2024. This once-in-a-lifetime spectacle is seeing air traffic like never before, and Prayagraj Airport is handling as many passengers a day as it did a month before the Mahakumbh started.

Not only has the airport started handling flights at night with the expanded terminal and apron area, but flights also have more than quadrupled since the pre-Maka Kumbh times. The airfares hit the roof, and the government stepped in as complaints reached social media. With airfares no longer under government control, a collaborative effort is being made to help the airlines add capacity and stabilise airfare. Airlines added flights and upgraded planes to higher capacity, and the complaints have marginally declined. The airport, though, has made it to the top 20 airports in the country, ahead of Patna or Chandigarh.

Data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company, exclusively for this article, shows that on some days of the week, the airport handles over 42 departures, four times the number before Mahakumbh.

SpiceJet on the forefront

Surprising as it may seem, it's not IndiGo leading the frequencies from Prayagraj. It is Spicejet which has the highest number of flights. The airline has 116 out of 283 weekly flights from Prayagraj, followed by IndiGo, which has 82 weekly departures. Air India, which announced flights and expansion much later than others, now has 32 weekly flights planned. At the same time, low-cost subsidiary Air India Express remains absent from the market. Akasa Air and government-owned Alliance Air have 28 and 25 weekly departures, respectively. For SpiceJet, flights to Prayagraj constitute nearly 13% of its total domestic departures.

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