The birthplace of top leading airlines or a hub of the civil aviation industry of India, Mumbai now is slowly losing its charm as most of the airlines relocated their base offices from the city.
The financial capital used to have a decent number of airline base offices for carriers, which used to function from the city, now left with only two airlines’ corporate headquarters – one-year-old Akasa Air and the second is Go First which has already filed for bankruptcy.
The major airline offices and airports as operational headquarters are now based in Bengaluru, Gurugram, or Delhi.
The leading carriers SpiceJet and IndiGo operate from Gurugram. Vistara, Air India, and Alliance Air operate their major work from Delhi. Star Air and AirAsia India have set up their operation base in Bengaluru. While Air India Express relocated its headquarters to Mumbai, it now has a base setup in Gurugram.
Also Read: Go First Has Lengthy History Of…: US Firm P&W Responds to Airline’s ‘Faulty Engines’ Blame for Bankruptcy
Amid this, the struggling Jet Airways, which had its headquarters in Mumbai, had ambitions to establish Jet 2.0 in Delhi. Apart from this, the upcoming Indian airline Fly91, which has plans to start its operation soon, will have its base office in Goa.
Talking about the sudden change of Mumbai’s aviation business, defunct East-West Airlines’ director Faisal Wahid said that a few decades ago, Mumbai used the massive market for the aviation industry. He said that the city used to have a most obvious option for base setups for airlines. From night parking spaces and an engineering base with a hangar large enough to house one or two aircraft, the city was equipped with every back then. Mumbai would like to be a hub for airlines, but infrastructure issues prevent it, Wahid added.
Wahid said, in the 1990s, only ModiLuft and Air Sahara had base headquarters in Delhi. The corporate headquarters and operating bases of all other significant airlines, including Air India, EastWest, and Damania Airways, were located in Mumbai. South and Western Indian passengers used to board the international flights from Mumbai. He further said that back then, thousands of migrants from Kerala travelling to the Gulf used to have their first stop in Mumbai.
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