Premium class passenger traffic up by 30%: Cathay Pacific

Mumbai: Premier global carrier Cathay Pacific has seen an upsurge in premium class travel to and fro India this year on the back of an improved international business environment, a senior airline executive has said.
In the first six months of this year, the demand for business class travel has gone up by 30 per cent, Tom Wright, Cathay's General Manager (India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan), told PTI here.
"The demand still looks good and it is in both the front-end and the back-end," he said, implying the demand for travel by business and economy classes.
"We had the problems with the front end (or business class), but that has now improved quite a bit. The demand is now fast coming back. For India, there is a 30 per cent growth in the premium class passenger traffic," Wright said.
Maintaining that the Hong Kong-based full-service airline had clocked considerable growth in its India operations, he said "we are basically now coming back to the level where we were in 2008 at 18 per cent overall growth. So far things look quite encouraging and revenues have been very strong".
Wright said an "interesting thing" was that destinations like Vietnam and Cambodia, which were not major for Indians earlier, were "now becoming very popular".
On reports about allowing foreign airlines to invest in Indian carriers, Wright said it would be meaningful for overseas carriers only if management control was allowed.
18/07/10 PTI/Economic Times

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Categories: Foreign Jul 2010