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 are daily all season; the rest come and go. Hyderabad's 2026 filing carries a written monsoon pause (1 Jul – 30 Sep), Mumbai's nonstop is filed for October only, and Bhubaneswar — which appeared in the data in March 2025 — vanished again after January 2026.
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 and Akasa Air filed with the DGCA for summer 2026 — valid 29 March to 24 October. The winter schedule takes over after that and can differ.
| From | Frequency | Airlines |
|---|---|---|
| Chennai | Daily, all season — 3 flights a day | IndiGo, Akasa Air |
| Kolkata | Daily, all season | IndiGo, Air India Express, Akasa Air |
| Bengaluru | Daily, all season | Air India Express; IndiGo rotation 1 Oct onward |
| Delhi | Daily, all season | Air India |
| Hyderabad | Daily, paused 1 Jul – 30 Sep | IndiGo |
| Mumbai | Filed for 1–24 Oct only | IndiGo |
| Visakhapatnam | Filed to 15 Apr; pax data shows ~3/wk continuing | Air India Express, Air India |
| Bhubaneswar | Operated Mar 2025 – Jan 2026; not in SS26 | — |
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.
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. The months either side of the peak — September through November — carry good weather, a full running season and materially lower prices, and the data says they are still well short of December's crush. 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 Summer Schedule 2026 filings (published 18 March 2026) from IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express and Akasa Air — 54 Port Blair movements parsed.
- 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 confirm these are operated direct sectors rather than connecting itineraries.
- Validity: the route table is the summer season only and expires 24 October 2026. We re-pull when the winter 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 summer 2026 (valid 29 March to 24 October) — but the honest answer is a moving one. Chennai, Kolkata, Bengaluru and Delhi are daily through the whole season. Hyderabad's daily flight is filed with a monsoon pause, 1 July to 30 September. Mumbai's nonstop is filed for 1–24 October only. Visakhapatnam was filed to mid-April, though the passenger record shows it continuing at around three days a week. Bhubaneswar operated from March 2025 and ended in January 2026. The winter schedule takes over from late October and usually widens the map — 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 formalises the same pattern: Hyderabad's daily flight carries a stated suspension from 1 July to 30 September, and Mumbai's nonstop is filed only from 1 October. 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. It is also why we check current schedules rather than relying on last season.
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 Summer Schedule 2026 filings submitted by IndiGo, Air India, Air India Express and Akasa Air. 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 29,000 booked legs.
- Best time to visit — the month-by-month verdict these numbers support.
- Andaman in October — 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.