Air Canada eyes daily flight to India

New Delhi: Air Canada has its eye on a major new route: the airline is considering starting daily flights to India by the end of the year, according to sales staff now on the ground in Delhi.
The two obstacles, they confided to The Globe, are first a shortage of planes ("China is using up all our fleet!") and second, a fear that demand won't be consistent enough through the year to make the routes (likely non-stop to Toronto from Delhi and Mumbai) viable.
Canadian tourism in India is picking up -- there were no fewer than 20 separate Canadian tourism events held in India last year to entice the industry, with Niagara Falls the number one draw. But tourists come in the relatively short season, December through March, before the temperatures head above 30C.
There is plenty of traffic in the family of Indo-Canadians coming and going, but they fly over once a year and stay "until the very last day of their six-month visa" -- so they won't fill planes. What Air Canada is looking to see is sufficient business travel to justify the route -- there are said to be dozens of Canadian companies poised to move into India, with one nervous eye on the country's rapidly involving but still Byzantine regulatory environment.
In the meantime, the best of India's airlines, Jet Airways, has a lock on the direct service to Toronto (although the flight stops in Europe for two unpleasant hours) and also serves Calgary, Edmonton and Vancouver.
17/06/11 Stephane Nolen/Globe and Mail

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Categories: Foreign Jun 2011, New Jun 2011