Air India Plan International Routes From Delhi

Friday, 26th April 2013 at 05:58am

Air India is now poised to take on an aggressive mood with its expansion plans of its route network following the recent development in the country's aviation industry, referring to Etihad's stake purchase in Jet Airways.

The flag carrier Air India is planning to connect the country's capital, Delhi, to overseas destinations, as soon as Jet moves its base to Abu Dhabi. Jet Airways has hinted that it will move its base of operations from Delhi, India to the UAE capital as soon as possible after the finalization of its deal with Etihad Airways.

Air India is eying cities in Europe and Australia as possible destinations from the Indian capital. The airline is worrying that if they won't act fast, travelers would get tempted to fly to Abu Dhabi and Dubai for their European long-haul trips instead of flying directly from Delhi to those destinations. European and Australian cities that Air India is targeting include Birmingham, Rome, Moscow, Melbourne and Sydney.

AI's Rohit Nandan said that the airline is trying to make a strategy, while it can, to boost its market share for international traffic into and out of India. It has to move quickly so as to get ahead of the competition while it is at a manageable level.

Presently, three dominant airlines in the Gulf (Qatar Airways, Emirates and Etihad) carry about 40% of the total international traffic between India and the Middle East. Indian travelers to and from Europe and beyond have been routed that way for lack of direct and economical linkages between their original destinations and India. Air India is hoping to change that with the introduction of the new routes originating from Delhi.

After the government took back all Kingfisher's international slots following the cancellation of its license to operate, Jet Airways has applied for some of those rights allotted before to Kingfisher. Jet is keen on flying particularly to Hong Kong, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Kuwait and Singapore among other destinations.

The AI official also said that Indian airlines should act aggressively now that the government has liberalized its FDI policy on local airlines which is becoming more attractive for foreign airlines to invest or acquire sizable stakes. Like what would eventually happen to Jet Airways and Etihad which, together, will surely eat up a significant portion of the market.

Most Indian airlines are not able to compete head to head with their Gulf counterparts in terms of equipment, capacity and financial strength. What Indian airlines can do best is to find a way to double its effort in expanding its services in the domestic front.

Most Gulf carriers' fleet consists mostly of modern and wide-body high-capacity aircraft capable of flying long-haul flights. These carriers are still in the process of boosting their fleet with a combined 460 planes between them.

Air India will use the still-grounded Boeing 787 Dreamliner for the new destinations.

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