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BA expects passenger numbers on Indian routes to reach 1m
Kevin Done from Bangalore
11/26/2005
British Airways is expanding its presence in India rapidly, following the ambitious liberalisation of the India-UK aviation, market agreed by the two governments earlier this year.
Willie Walsh, BA chief executive, said India had already become the airline's second-biggest long-haul market after the US and he forecast strong growth in passenger volumes and profits on its UK-to-India routes next year.
The airline currently flies to five Indian cities after starting earlier direct flights to Bangalore, the centre of the Indian IT industry, and Mr Walsh said the group was considering expanding the network to include Hyderabad and Kochi as future destinations.
It has already increased weekly services between London Heathrow and India from 19 in October last year to 35, and this will increase to 42 next summer when the New Delhi service is doubled to two flights a day.
BA has also doubled its service to Mumbai, formerly Bombay, to two flights each day and has increased flights to Chennai, formerly Madras, from two to six flights a week. Services to Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) remain at three a week.
The new five-times-a-week Bangalore service would be increased later to a daily service, said Mr Walsh.
But, with no new long-haul aircraft on order, BA faces problems in finding the spare capacity to support its India expansion. It has pulled out of Saudi Arabia with the closure of its loss-making Riyadh route and is also seeking to improve utilisation of the existing fleet.
At the same time it has converted four 767 wide-body jets from short-haul to long-haul routes and more could follow.
Mr Walsh ruled out acquiring any more long-haul aircraft before BA's move to Terminal Five at Heathrow in March 2008. He showed little interest in buying the Airbus A380 superjumbo, the world's biggest passenger aircraft, in spite of the fact that many of its rivals will begin flying it into Heathrow from the end of next year, led by Singapore Airlines.
The airline remains in talks with Boeing, however, about the possible eventual acquisition of the planned 747 Advanced, a new stretched version of the venerable Boeing 747 jumbo, which is under consideration by the US aircraft maker.
Martin George, BA commercial director, said passenger numbers on its UK-India routes were expected to rise from about 750,000 this year to 1.0m in 2006.
BA is expanding rapidly in order to maintain its dominant role in the UK-India market, but it is also facing a growing challenge from other UK and Indian carriers, as the market expands.
Both Virgin Atlantic and BMI British Midland are playing an increasing role, as are the privately owned Indian carriers JetAirways and Air Sahara. By the start of next month Virgin Atlantic will have grown from three services a week last February to 14, with daily services to both Mumbai and New Delhi.
Mr George said BA was in advanced negotiations with Air Sahara on forming a commercial alliance. This could involve code-sharing and co-ordinating schedules to allow the Indian carrier to provide feed traffic from its domestic network to BA's long-haul gateway cities in India, and with BA codesharing on Air Sahara domestic routes.
As part of the co-operation, Air Sahara could become the first Indian carrier to join one of the global alliances by applying to join Oneworld, the grouping led in part by BA.
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