Commercial flights start at Bhogapuram, and Bengaluru is the route that has to work

Sixteen days after the ceremony, the airport is flying. Air India announced on August 16 that it would begin scheduled operations from the Alluri Sitarama Raju International Airport at Bhogapuram from August 17, turning a terminal into a timetable.

For Bengaluru, the news is narrower and more useful than the headline. Reports through the week traced IndiGo and Air India Express on the Bengaluru–Vizianagaram pair, and the Deccan Chronicle's account of Air India's published schedule set out what the new connectivity means for travellers who currently route a southern trip through Visakhapatnam.

What the Bengaluru link actually buys

• A Bengaluru–Vizianagaram pair substitutes a flight for the road leg that a Visakhapatnam connection requires.
• Frequency is the exposure: a new domestic pair can be trimmed within weeks if loads disappoint.
• Codeshare and through-ticket interlining are the difference between a new route and a new option.

The larger question is whether Air India has actually moved, or added. Business Standard reported that the airline shifted its existing Visakhapatnam services to Bhogapuram, which makes the first-day schedule of roughly 31 flights the honest measure of demand rather than the inauguration photograph.

For a passenger, the arithmetic is unglamorous. A route that connects to the rest of the network at the same airport beats a route that connects through a road journey. A route that does not codeshare with the onward carrier at Bengaluru is a route that ends at Bengaluru.

Airport economics run on cargo as much as on seats, and the Bhogapuram design gives it a cargo terminal of about 5,000 square metres for 25,000 tonnes a year. Whether that capacity earns anything depends on hinterland freight, which is a slower variable than holiday traffic.

Regional coverage in the days before the launch concentrated on the state politics of the project's completion. The traffic figures that will decide whether it worked have only now started being produced.

• Load factors on the Bengaluru–Vizianagagram pair through the festival and year-end weeks.
• Whether codeshare interlining with Bengaluru is announced.
• Any change to the reported ₹4,592 crore and ₹5,000 crore project cost figures.