Passengers leaving Ahmedabad for Paris, Toronto or Sydney can now hand over their bags once, clear immigration at Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, and walk straight to their onward gate in Delhi. The Union civil aviation ministry switched on international hub-and-spoke operations at Ahmedabad on 1 September, making it the third Indian airport on the network after Varanasi and Amritsar.
Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu launched the service alongside Chief Minister Bhupendra Patel, with Minister of State Murlidhar Mohol and Deputy Chief Minister Harsh Sanghavi present, Sunday Guardian reported.
What actually changes at the airport
Two Air India services carry the arrangement. AI 1117 feeds 22 international destinations across Europe, Southeast Asia and West Asia; AI 1121, which departs at 8.15 pm, feeds 17 across North America, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Australia and Europe. The Tribune put the count reachable inside a four-hour connection window at 26.
Until now a Gujarati flying abroad through Delhi collected checked baggage at the domestic arrivals belt, moved terminals, queued again at international check-in, and cleared emigration there. Two of those three steps disappear. For a family carrying three suitcases and a connection under three hours, that is the difference between a workable itinerary and one nobody books.
Why Gujarat was an obvious candidate
Ahmedabad has long-haul demand without much long-haul supply. Gujarat’s diaspora in the United States, Britain, Canada and East Africa keeps traffic high year-round, and the state’s textile, pharmaceutical, diamond and engineering exporters generate steady business travel. The airport’s own non-stop international map, though, runs mostly to the Gulf and Southeast Asia. Everything else has meant a connection, and a large share of those connections have gone through Dubai, Doha or Abu Dhabi on foreign carriers rather than through an Indian hub.
That leakage is the policy target. Naidu said 1.6 crore passengers flew Ahmedabad to Delhi last year to board an international flight, and the ministry has set 2030 as the year India expects to carry the bulk of its own outbound traffic through domestic hubs. The two ministers also pointed to projections of about 4 lakh direct and indirect aviation jobs and roughly $30 billion in economic contribution by 2030.
The limits worth knowing before booking
The product runs on Air India metal end to end. A traveller who finds a cheaper Delhi departure on another carrier gets none of this, because through check-in needs a single ticket and an interline agreement. Nor does the launch add a single non-stop from Ahmedabad; the flying is unchanged, and only the paperwork moves.
Reliability is the other open question. A through-checked bag that misses a Delhi transfer is harder to trace than one the passenger collected in person, and Ahmedabad departures that slip past the connection window will strand travellers at an airport where they have no onward booking under their own control. Both problems are ordinary in global aviation and both are solvable, but they are what will decide whether Gujarati travellers switch away from the Gulf carriers.
What to watch
The ministry named 22 more airports for the same treatment, Surat among them. Surat’s inclusion matters for the diamond and textile trade, which currently drives to Ahmedabad or Mumbai for anything long-haul. Watch also for whether Air India thickens the Ahmedabad-Delhi schedule, since a hub-and-spoke product with two feeder flights a day is a narrow offering, and for whether the 2030 Commonwealth Games in Ahmedabad pull forward any non-stop European or East Asian route.
Sources: The Tribune, Sunday Guardian, Asianet Newsable, DeshGujarat
This report was written with AI assistance from the publicly reported sources linked here; each fact was cross-checked against at least two of them.