The OnBoard Courier for India

After it come Bangalore (BLR) with 96 destinations and about 391.8 departures a day, Mumbai (BOM) with 106 destinations and about 372.3 departures a day, Hyderabad (HYD) with 79 destinations and about 245.2 departures a day, Chennai (MAA) with 58 destinations and about 160.7 departures a day and Kolkata (CCU) with 51 destinations and about 142.9 departures a day. Those are the alternates. When the primary gateway is shut by weather, a strike or a curfew, they are what a courier is rebooked through. Between them the 31 airports in India that publish departures schedule about 2,816.6 movements a day and reach 905 separate destinations, counting each city once per airport.

Reach matters more than frequency for a hand carry, because a courier flies whatever is leaving. From DEL alone, 1,392 airports are reachable with exactly one change, on top of the 133 served nonstop. That is a normal spread for a well connected gateway, and it means a routing exists for most requests without waiting for a specific weekly service. It is computed from the scheduled network rather than from a booking engine.

79 per cent of everything scheduled to leave the country stays inside it, across 84 domestic destinations. That matters on a hand carry because it decides whether the last leg can be flown or has to be driven. A consignee outside the gateway city is then a connecting flight, not a four hour drive.

Outside its own borders the country is tied most closely to the United Arab Emirates, about 156.2 flights a day, Saudi Arabia, about 46.8 flights a day, Thailand, about 44.7 flights a day, Singapore, about 36.3 flights a day and Qatar, about 30.1 flights a day. Those are the markets a courier can reach from India without a long connection, and they are also where a third country leg most often starts: an item that has to go from India to somewhere with no direct service usually travels through one of them.

90 airlines fly out of India in this data. Counted by how many of the country's routes each one appears on, the widest networks belong to IndiGo on 660 routes, Air India Express on 220 routes, Air India on 157 routes, Starlight Airline on 77 routes and Alliance Air on 36 routes. The carrier matters to a hand carry more than it does to freight, because cabin baggage rules, what counts as an acceptable carry on item and whether an extra seat can be bought are set by the airline and not by the airport.

The longest single sector out of DEL in this data runs to Newark, United States (EWR), 11,764 km by great circle. Great circle is not a flown distance and will read short against a real routing, but it is the honest way to state a reach: it says what one aircraft does without stopping, which is exactly the question a courier desk is asking.

From the Emirates, India is reached nonstop. The network file records 27 such pairs, of which 25 run often enough to plan around: Dubai to Mumbai (BOM), about 14.7 a day on Air India, Emirates and flydubai, Dubai to New Delhi (DEL), about 14.6 a day on Air India, Emirates and flydubai, Abu Dhabi to Kochi (COK), about 10 a day on Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, Air India Express and Etihad Airways, Abu Dhabi to Chennai (MAA), about 7.4 a day on Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, Etihad Airways and IndiGo and Dubai to Hyderabad (HYD), about 6.7 a day on Air India Express, Emirates and flydubai. More than one nonstop pair means more than one chance to travel on the day the consignment is ready, which is worth more on this kind of work than any single fast flight.

The carriers on those sectors are Air India, Emirates, flydubai, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air Arabia Abu Dhabi, Air India Express and Etihad Airways. With this many, the choice is an operational one rather than a preference: cabin baggage allowances, what each airline accepts as a carry on item and how it treats an extra seat purchase all differ, and those three things decide whether the consignment travels in the cabin at all.

This site publishes 28 lane pages that cross the border of India. Leaving India: Chennai to Stuttgart, Delhi to Abu Dhabi, Delhi to Frankfurt, Delhi to Sharjah, Hyderabad to Frankfurt, Mumbai to Abu Dhabi, Mumbai to Doha and Mumbai to London. Arriving: Abu Dhabi to Bangalore, Abu Dhabi to Delhi, Abu Dhabi to Hyderabad, Abu Dhabi to Mumbai, Amsterdam to Bangalore, Doha to Delhi, Doha to Mumbai and Dubai to Bangalore.

Each of those has its own page with the flying time, the gateway pair and what actually moves on it. Read together they say something the individual pages do not: the places India is connected to on this desk are Abu Dhabi, Amsterdam, Stuttgart, Frankfurt, Sharjah, Doha, Dubai, London and Singapore. A lane page exists because the traffic on it is real, not because the pair looked plausible on a map.

Counting what is already published, this site holds 46 city pages, 10 standalone city pages, 31 Atlas entries, 6 airport pages, 28 lane pages and 8 trade and history pages for India, and every one of them is linked from this page. That is the point of a country index: the material exists, it was written one page at a time, and until now there was no single place that connected it.

Alongside the reference material there is the country desk page, the entry and formalities guide and the courier recruitment page for people who already fly this market. This is one of the most heavily covered markets on the site, and the depth is the point: a shipper in a particular city with a particular part does not want a country page, they want their own.