Foreign airlines start pulling out of India as traffic declines

Mumbai: International carriers that were continually adding capacity into India in the last one year are feeling the heat of economic downturn and have started pulling out their services from the country.
Even as few carriers are still increasing the number of flights to India, carriers such as Singapore Airlines, British Airways, KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Austrian Airlines are either pulling out or reducing capacities on India routes.
Others with a small presence, such as Air Mauritius and Finnair, are also considering discontinuing flights out of India because of the increasing number of empty seats.
“Companies and consumers have quickly tightened their travel budgets, leading to a decrease in load factors and high-margin business class travel across most of the globe,” Standard and Poor’s credit analyst Tammy Garay wrote in a report on airports on Wednesday, pointing out that some airlines have also succumbed to the downturn.
The International Air Transport Association, or Iata, an international trade body representing some 230 airlines comprising 93% of scheduled international air traffic, had said international passenger traffic declined 2.9% in September compared with the same month in 2007. International load factors tumbled by 4.4 percentage points from August to 74.8% in September.
20/11/08 P.R. Sanjai/Livemint

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Categories: Foreign Nov 2008