Foreign airlines to expand fleet

New Delhi: Buoyed by the impressive growth in passenger traffic in the Indian market, foreign airlines are on an expansion spree here.
While Star Alliance member Lufthansa plans to launch operation on Pune-Germany sector besides increasing its frequency on the existing sectors, Cathay Pacific would start flying on the Hong Kong-Chennai sector. Another Hong Kong-based carrier Dragonair is in the process of flying to Bangalore.
According to a data compiled by Airports Authority of India (AAI), 16.21 million people flew on international routes to and from India during April-October 2007-08. This was a growth of 17.1% over the same period last fiscal.
Cathay Pacific plans to launch 23 new flights a week connecting Indian cities such as Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai with Hong Kong by early June. Another Asian carrier Air China is also looking at adding more destinations like Bangalore and Kolkata on its Indian network, besides increasing its frequency on Delhi-Beijing route from the existing three flights a week.
Gulf-based carriers such as Emirates, Gulf Air and Qatar Airways are also aggressively looking at tapping the traffic growth in non-metro cities such as Calicut, Amritsar and Lucknow.
19/01/08 Economic Times

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Categories: Foreign Jan 2008