Open data · Andaman air connectivity · July 2026
Andaman air connectivity: 11 years of Port Blair flight data
Everyone knows the Andamans have a season. Nobody had put a number on how fast that season is narrowing. We pulled every month of DGCA passenger data for Port Blair from 2015 to 2026, added the airlines' own filed schedules, and found a destination whose traffic is at record highs while its off-season shrinks beneath it.
The three findings
The peak-to-trough gap has widened from 1.6× to 2.8×
In 2019, December carried 1.64 times July's traffic. By 2025 it carried 2.83 times. The season is not just busy — it is getting sharper every year.
Growth is entirely peak-season; the monsoon has gone backwards
Against pre-COVID 2019, December 2025 was up 39 percent — while July was down 20 percent. Total arrivals hit 881,004 in 2025, beating 2019's 848,056, but the gain sits entirely in months that were already full.
The direct map breathes with the season — and now the filings admit it
Four cities flew daily right through summer 2026; the rest came and went. The summer filing carried a written monsoon pause for Hyderabad (1 Jul – 30 Sep) and filed Mumbai for October only. The winter 2026–27 filing brings both back daily for the whole season, and Bhubaneswar — in the data from March 2025, gone after January 2026 — returns four days a week.
The Andaman year, indexed
Each month scored against an average month at 100, using the clean years 2023–2025. December runs 54 percent above average; July sits 39 percent below it.
The gap, year by year
| Year | December (peak) | July (trough) | Ratio |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | 80,475 | 40,865 | 1.97× |
| 2018 | 90,275 | 48,239 | 1.87× |
| 2019 | 85,270 | 51,978 | 1.64× |
| 2023 | 83,618 | 36,483 | 2.29× |
| 2025 | 118,192 | 41,792 | 2.83× |
2020–2022 are excluded as COVID-distorted. July has been the annual trough in seven of the last eight comparable years.
Who flies to Port Blair now
From the schedules IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet filed with the DGCA for winter 2026–27 — valid 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027. The summer 2026 map was smaller: Hyderabad paused for the monsoon, Mumbai flew only in October, and neither Bhubaneswar nor SpiceJet was in it.
| From | Frequency | Airlines |
|---|---|---|
| Chennai | Daily, all season — 4 flights a day | IndiGo, Akasa Air |
| Kolkata | Daily, all season — 7 flights a day | IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa Air, SpiceJet |
| Bengaluru | Daily, all season — 2 a day, 3 from 30 Nov, as filed | Air India Express, IndiGo |
| Delhi | Daily, all season — 3 a day filed, 4 from 15 Nov | Air India; Air India Express from 15 Nov |
| Hyderabad | Daily, all season — 2 a day from 30 Nov | IndiGo |
| Mumbai | Daily, all season | IndiGo |
| Bhubaneswar | Four days a week (Mon, Wed, Fri, Sun) | Air India Express |
| Visakhapatnam | Not in the winter filing; last filed to 15 Apr 2026 | — |
Two counts carry a caveat from the filing itself. Delhi's includes one Air India pair that its own filing lists daily in one place and four days a week in another. Bengaluru's other-airport section leaves some flights out on several days between 30 January and 12 February 2027 and in late March. The schedule page explains both. Flight numbers, operating days and exact timings for every route above live on our Port Blair flight schedule page, re-published from each DGCA filing.
Summer against winter, in scheduled flights
The passenger swing above now shows in the airlines' own schedules. Counted week by week from the DGCA filings, scheduled arrivals into Port Blair:
| Week | Schedule | Arrivals a week | Cities with a direct flight |
|---|---|---|---|
| 6–12 July 2026 | Summer 2026 | 53 | 4 |
| 5–11 October 2026 | Summer 2026 | 81 | 6 |
| 26 October – 1 November 2026 | Winter 2026–27 | 130 | 7 |
| 7–13 December 2026 | Winter 2026–27 | 151 | 7 |
Across each whole season that is 9.4 scheduled arrivals a day in summer and 21.0 in winter. December's 151 a week is 2.85 times July's 53, almost exactly the 2.83 times by which December 2025's passengers outnumbered July 2025's. The schedule now swings about as much as the traffic does. All of it happens in daylight: every scheduled flight lands between 06:50 and 15:00 and the last leaves at 15:45, so a December Monday carries 44 movements, 22 in and 22 out, in about nine hours.
Against last winter, December is slightly down, and the mix has moved. Counting only the flights both ends of each airline's filing agree on, December 2026 has 655 scheduled arrivals against 681 in December 2025, about 4 per cent fewer; across each whole winter, 20.4 a day against 21.7. In December, IndiGo has gone from 295 arrivals to 341 and Air India from 62 to 80, while SpiceJet has halved, from 124 to 62, and Air India Express has fallen from 155 to 110. By city, Chennai is down from 186 to 124, while Delhi has risen from 62 to 111 and Hyderabad has doubled, from 31 to 62. Visakhapatnam has gone from 13 to none.
The weekly table counts each filing's Port Blair section as filed. Each filing lists a flight twice, once under Port Blair and once under the other city, and the two copies sometimes disagree. Last winter's disagree much more: read as filed, its Port Blair section gives 791 arrivals in December 2025, but several of those flights have no matching entry under the other city. So for the comparison between winters we count only flights both copies list. Filings are approved plans, not a record of what flew.
What a 2.8× swing means on the ground
A destination whose December carries nearly three times its July is a destination running two different economies in one year. Hotels, boats, drivers and guides are sized for one of those months and idle through the other. The widening trend means that mismatch is growing, not settling.
For a traveller it points somewhere specific and slightly counterintuitive. November, the month before the peak, has near-December weather — about 16 dry days in 30 at the Port Blair gauge, against December's 21 — a full running season, and it comes before the peak surcharges; the data says it is still well short of December's crush (a seasonal index of 125 against 154). That is the window we steer our own guests toward, and the numbers here are the reason we can argue it rather than assert it.
Methodology, honestly
- Passenger series: DGCA Monthly Statistics (Domestic Air Transport), city-pair table, April 2015 – May 2026. Arrivals into Port Blair are the sum of both directional fields across every city pair involving Port Blair. Domestic only.
- Schedule: DGCA Approved Winter Schedule 2026–27 filings (published 22 October 2026) from IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet — 46 Port Blair movements parsed (23 arrivals, 23 departures), each checked against the other airport's section of the same filing. The summer 2026 filings gave 40.
- Summer against winter: weekly scheduled arrivals counted date by date from the summer 2026 filings (published 18 March 2026), the winter 2026–27 filings and last winter's (published 16 October 2025). The year-on-year comparison covers all of December and each whole winter, and counts only flights listed under both Port Blair and the other city in the same filing.
- Clean years: the seasonal index uses 2023–2025 only. 2020–2022 are COVID-distorted and excluded from it.
- A gap we did not paper over: May 2024 is missing from the source data, so May averages the two years that have it rather than three. Averaging over three would have understated May by roughly 30 index points.
- What the numbers are not: the passenger series counts passengers, not flights or seats. The schedule filings are the airlines' approved plans for their stated dates; where a route carries passengers outside those dates, the counts alone do not establish a regular direct service.
- Validity: the route table is the winter season, 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027. We re-pull when the summer 2027 filing publishes.
Source data © Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Government of India, accessed via the open India Aviation Traffic dataset (Vivek Matthew), licensed ODbL. The analysis is ours. If you use these findings, please credit Tropical Andamans and link this page — and cite DGCA as the source of the underlying data.
Questions about the data
Which cities have direct flights to Port Blair?
Seven, in the schedule airlines filed with the DGCA for winter 2026–27 (valid 25 October 2026 to 27 March 2027): Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai every day, and Bhubaneswar four days a week. Visakhapatnam is not in it. The map moves with the season: in the summer 2026 filing Hyderabad paused from 1 July to 30 September, Mumbai flew only from 1 to 24 October, and Bhubaneswar was absent — it operated from March 2025 to January 2026 and returns this winter. The count is accurate for the season stated, not year-round.
What is the busiest month for flights to the Andamans?
December, by a wide margin. Across the clean years 2023 to 2025 it runs about 54 percent above an average month, with November and January the next busiest. July is the annual trough at roughly 39 percent below average — it has been the low month in seven of the last eight comparable years. December 2025 was the single busiest month in the series, at 118,192 arriving passengers.
Is Andaman tourism growing?
Yes, and more unevenly than the headline suggests. Total arrivals in 2025 reached 881,004, above the pre-COVID 2019 figure of 848,056. But the growth is concentrated: December 2025 was 39 percent above December 2019, while July 2025 was 20 percent below July 2019. The islands are getting busier in the months that were already busy, and quieter in the months that were already quiet.
Do flight routes to Port Blair change during the monsoon?
Yes — and in 2026 the pause is written into the schedule itself. In 2025 the Mumbai route recorded no passengers between June and September and Hyderabad none in July and August. The 2026 summer filing formalised the same pattern: Hyderabad's daily flight carried a stated suspension from 1 July to 30 September, and Mumbai's nonstop was filed only for 1–24 October. The DGCA's provisional 2026 figures agree: no Hyderabad passengers in July or August, and no Mumbai passengers from April to August. The monsoon pause has gone from something you discover in the traffic data to something the airlines file in advance — which is the cleanest evidence yet that the off-season network genuinely contracts. The winter 2026–27 filing, valid from 25 October, restores both as daily flights for the whole season. It is also why we check current schedules rather than relying on last season.
How many flights reach Port Blair in winter compared with summer?
About three times as many in December as in July. In the DGCA filings, Port Blair is scheduled for 151 arrivals a week from 30 November 2026, against 53 a week in July 2026 under the summer schedule, or 9.4 a day across the summer season and 21.0 across the winter one. December is slightly below last winter's: counting only the flights both ends of each filing agree on, 655 arrivals in December 2026 against 681 in December 2025. These are approved schedules, not a record of flights operated.
Where does this data come from?
Two official sources. The passenger series is the DGCA monthly domestic air transport statistics, city-pair table, covering April 2015 to May 2026, accessed through an open-licensed mirror of the published data. The current route and frequency picture comes from the DGCA Approved Winter Schedule 2026–27 filings submitted by IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express, Akasa Air and SpiceJet. Both are government publications. We have added the analysis, not the numbers.
Turn the data into a trip
- How to reach Andaman — the practical version: fares by city, the airport, the ferries.
- Ferry cancellations study — our other open-data study, from 28,482 booked legs.
- Best time to visit — the month-by-month verdict these numbers support.
- Andaman in October on BookYourFerry — the shoulder month the data keeps pointing at.
How this page stays true
Compiled by the Tropical Andamans team in Port Blair, July 2026. Every figure is computed from the published government sources named above — we added no estimates and adjusted no numbers. Where the source data has a hole, we say so rather than smoothing it. The route table carries an expiry date because it has one. We are a tour operator, not a research house, and we published this because the question kept coming up and nobody had answered it with the data.
Planning around the season?
Tell us your dates and we will tell you honestly what that month looks like — the flights, the crowds and the price, from the people who work the season.