The New Indian Express ·
Politics
BRICS members’ trade with one another rises, but air travel stays low
NEW DELHI: As India prepares to host world leaders for the 18th BRICS Summit, the bloc’s expanding trade throws up a curious contrast with its air links. Economic data from the Global Trade Research Initiative shows that total trade between India and its BRICS partners reached $417.5 billion in fiscal year 2026, up from $203.1 billion five years ago, driven by a 131.8% jump in imports. While some air corridors have recovered since the pandemic, connectivity remains limited on several key routes, particularly between Latin America and Asia.
Air links within BRICS have not recovered evenly over the past five years. Corridors closed or throttled by the pandemic and, in one case, geopolitics have rebounded sharply since 2023, while the bloc’s most distant pairing, Brazil and China, still has no nonstop service despite rising demand. The pattern splits along geography: Asia-facing corridors are growing fast; the trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic legs connecting Latin America to Asia remain thin.
China–Russia is the clearest recovery story. Weekly flights climbed from 230 a year ago to 309 in the 2026 summer season, and Russian carriers alone flew 1.6 million passengers to China in 2025, up 27% from 2024, according to Russia’s Transport Ministry via TASS. India–Russia has moved more slowly but is still expanding: passenger traffic rose 12% in the first half of 2026, according to the same ministry, building on a 2023 decision to raise Russian carriers’ weekly quota to India.
India–China illustrates how quickly a corridor can flip from zero to substantial. Direct flights were suspended in February 2020 after the pandemic and a deadly border clash, and stayed at zero for more than five years.
They resumed in stages from October 2025, and by April 2026, four carriers — IndiGo, Air India, China Eastern and Air China — were operating nonstop services between Delhi, Kolkata, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Kunming and Beijing, though capacity remains below 2019 levels.
The UAE’s accession to BRICS in 2024 folded in the bloc’s busiest corridor by far: 1,146 weekly flights currently connect India and the UAE, according to Gulf News.
Brazil–China is the outlier. Sabre Market Intelligence data cited by Aviation Week found China was Brazil’s largest unserved nonstop long-haul market in 2025, with roughly 248,000 two-way passengers routed through Europe or the Gulf.
Intra-BRICS aviation is consolidating around two axes, the India–Gulf corridor and a reopening India/Russia–China network, while the Brazil–Asia leg lags on both frequency and distance economics.
