Last week, when the latest DGCA aviation numbers came in, we could have simply reported them. International traffic was down 9%. Indian carriers were down 27%. Air India and Air India Express took a hit. IndiGo held up better. Akasa grew.
All true. But would that have been enough?
Because as AI gets better at doing the first draft of journalism, our job is to give you something more — insight.
The interesting bit was what sat underneath those numbers. So, we dug in.
Breaking the data by route, market and airline presented a much interesting picture.
It showed just how deeply Indian aviation is tied to the Gulf, why a crisis thousands of kilometres away can quickly become an Indian aviation story, and why two airlines facing the same disruption can come out of it in very different shape.
They also tell us something about what comes next.
Air India is trying to build a global network at precisely the moment when geopolitics is making global aviation harder to plan. Air India Express has enormous exposure to the India-Gulf corridor. IndiGo has more room to move because it has been building a broader international network. And SpiceJet's numbers suggest that an external shock can look very different when an airline is already dealing with its own problems.
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