NY flight takes off near-empty, but Air India hopeful of better numbers

Mumbai: Even as Union Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel flagged off Air India’s inaugural non-stop flight to New York amid much fanfare early on Wednesday, the flag carrier’s top brass mulled over the near-empty Boeing 777-200LR that pushed back from Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport at 12:45 am.
For onboard the “historic” flight were a meagre 80-odd passengers—including a dozen freeloaders—as against the 238 seats available. Or a paltry 33 per cent load. What’s worse: things don’t appear much better for the first fortnight either.
“As per booking details available for the first 10 days, the average load will be around 40 per cent or 95 passengers per flight, which is much lower than expected,” revealed a source. During the same period, Delta Airlines—the only other airline offering a non-stop service between the two financial nerve centers—has a handful tickets available, that too in the higher classes.
Air India had opened bookings with fares over 30 per cent higher than the industry average on the sector, which were later brought at par, because of slow bookings. Yet, Air India’s target of a 75 per cent average load factor—roughly 178 seats—on the popular route seem far off: the poorest capacity will be on their second flight, with merely 56 passengers holding reservations, followed by the third flight that will have as few as 62 fliers.
01/08/07 Lekha Agarwal/Mumbai Newsline

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Categories: Air India Aug 2007, Foreign Aug 2007, New Aug 2007