CHENNAI: If you’ve had to travel from or to Chennai at short notice in the past and scoured one travel website after another for an air ticket, there’s a good chance that the only elevation that you would have achieved is with your frustration at the futility of it all.But things are rapidly changing. The city airport , dissed for its capacity limitations, now handles at least 30 red-eye flights — between 11pm and 5am — on a daily basis. There are now no less than 10 to 12 departures and 20 arrivals the airport, up from two or three overnight flights just a year and a half ago.Red-eye flights are not just a boon when tickets run out: They are also cheaper than peak-hour flights.An airline official said peak-hour demand has led to an increase in the number of travellers choosing red-eye flights. An increase in the number of overnight flights on domestic routes has allowed the trend to take hold, he said.Peak-hour slots are often all taken in Chennai, so travellers have started to take overnight flights,” the official said. “Airlines with flights that land in Chennai after 12am use their aircraft for outbound flights when the morning peak hour starts.”The domestic terminal remains as busy through the night as it is during peak hours, an airport official said. “A year ago, there were very few arrivals after midnight,” he said. “There are now around 10 daily arrivals after 1am.”Flights arrive past 11pm from Pune, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bhubaneswar, Kolkata, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Delhi and Hyderabad. There are four arrivals from Pune and three arrivals from Delhi. Departing aircraft head to Bengaluru, Jaipur, Pune, Patna, Goa and Patna.“Red-eye flights are not new but we now have several on domestic routes,” said a senior official with Airports Authority of India. “A few of the arrivals are of aircraft that airlines are bringing back to Chennai; others are of those that airlines are bringing back to the city for early departures and vice-versa.”Airlines may also be using the late flights as part of a hub-and-spoke model, to bring domestic passengers to Chennai, from where they hop on to international flights, industry sources said.There is no domestic departure slot between 12am and 1am, however, because this is when most international flights take off.

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