Airlines scramble for a piece of the Indo-US air space

New Delhi: No major price skirmishes expected; Passengers seem to prefer flights with a short stop-over.
With both state-run Air India and private carrier Jet Airways starting their operations to US and many more flights in the offing, the Indo-US air space is all set for a battle royale between the Indian, American and European carriers.
The battle is being fought between carriers who are offering non-stop services like Air India, Kingfisher Airlines (subject to government approval), Delta Airlines and Continental Airlines and the others who see one-stop service as a better alternative to address the needs of Indian consumers.
These include Jet Airways, Sapphire Airways and, of course, all the exisiting European carriers.
In an effort to take Air India head on, Continental Airlines, which already has a daily non-stop Delhi-New York service is starting a daily non-stop Mumbai-New York flight from October 2, instead of October 31.
That apart, American start-ups like Sapphire Airlines, promoted by NRI Rahul Puranik, will have around 14 flights a week between San Francisco-Bangalore and San Francisco-Delhi.
In the market it seems the flights with a short stop-over are doing better. Jet Airways registered a Passsenger Load Factor (PLF) of 100 per cent (flight launched on August 5) compared to Air-India's 50-53 per cent on its flight which launched on August 1 .
However-while no major price skirmishes are expected-carriers are still dropping prices so that they do not lose out customers as a result of promotional fares being offered by Air India. The fares are expected to settle around Rs 60,000 to Rs 75,000," said an industry expert.
However, despite an initial lukwarm response AI is expecting customers to troop in.
The airline expects this percentage to go up to 28 per cent by the end of this year, thereby making it the top revenue earner. Air-India will no more having a monopoly in the Gulf route from 2008, which used give it 75 per cent of the revenue.
09/08/07 nirban Chowdhury & P R Sanjai/Business Standard

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Categories: Foreign Aug 2007, General Aviation Aug 2007