Airlines eye Middle Kingdom

Mumbai: With both the Indian and Chinese governments agreeing to a full fifth freedom last month, the doors have opened for Indian carriers to tap the lucrative US west coast market through the Middle Kingdom as well as tap China’s growing tourism market.
This will give Indian carriers the ballast to challenge established foreign carriers like Singapore Airlines and Cathay, which have picked most of the India-US traffic, commanding a 65 per cent market share both for the west coast and for North America, for decades.
Under fifth freedom rights, airlines from one country can land in another country, pick up passengers from there and fly to a third country. China has allowed Indian carriers to fly from there to three destinations of their choice to the US West Coast.
The outbound market of 400,000-odd Indians who travel to China annually is attractive. Roughly 100,000 of these are leisure travellers, a market that is growing by at least 15 per cent a year and could grow faster if there were more direct connections from India to China.
Also 70 per cent of the traffic from the west coast of US to Asia goes to either China or India, making it another lucrative arena to tap.
11/04/08 Manisha Singhal/Business Standard

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Categories: Foreign Apr 2008, Indian Aviation- In General Apr 2008