Air India to Start Hub-and-Spoke Flights from Amritsar via Delhi

Amritsar already has direct flights to Dubai, Sharjah, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, London and Birmingham. Last fiscal the airport handled 9.97 lakh international passengers, a decline of 13.5% over FY25. The drop partly reflects the limits of point-to-point international flying from a city of roughly one million.

A large Punjabi diaspora in Australia and Canada generates connecting traffic. Those passengers currently transfer at Gulf hubs rather than Indian ones. The hub-and-spoke model funnels that flow through Delhi instead, making Amritsar a feeder for longer-haul routes.

Air India did not respond to an email query on the timeline for the Amritsar-Delhi service. The airline's managing director and CEO Campbell Wilson had earlier said Air India wants to make international travel more accessible for passengers from smaller cities. Last month the airline said it would progressively connect more cities to its hubs in Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru with "easy connect" flights, naming Ahmedabad, Chennai, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Kochi, Patna, Vadodara and Visakhapatnam.

Amritsar was not on that list. Wednesday's announcement signals the airline is treating it as a priority addition. The economics work only if Air India can match the connecting-bank frequency that Gulf carriers offer – a challenge given aircraft constraints across the industry. The regulatory piece is now in place, and the Punjab diaspora is the most concentrated source of India-to-Australia and India-to-Canada traffic available.