Although routes are yet to be divulged, Tony Fernandes, Founder and Group CEO, AirAsia, has already said he won’t serve some of the larger Tier 1 Indian airports in his statements on the start-up of AirAsia India, the seventh operation under the over-arching AirAsia low-cost mega brand (following AirAsia, Thai AirAsia, Indonesia AirAsia, AirAsia Philippines, AirAsia X and AirAsia Japan): “Certain airports we will avoid due to their high charge structure.” Specifically Fernandes says: “We wouldn’t see Mumbai as a main destination.” However, he does acknowledge that: “Delhi has a kind of low-cost terminal offering.” It would therefore seem that AirAsia India will initially link smaller, Tier 2 cities to Chennai and will also look add some competition on the largest international markets in the medium-term. Here anna.aero investigates the potential target markets.
What we do know is that AirAsia India will be based at Chennai International Airport, India’s third largest. As low-cost airlines typically like to “join-the-dots”, Bengaluru and Kolkata would seem to be the most likely Tier 1 opportunities, as AirAsia already flies to both destinations from Kuala Lumpur. Competition on the Kolkata route will be against Jet Airways, SpiceJet, Air India and IndiGo – a combined 56 weekly flights – and it will be fiercer on Bengaluru, where the same four airlines fly 101 weekly services! Ignoring the remainder of the Tier 1 cities (Mumbai, Delhi, and Hyderabad), all of which have in excess of 10,000 weekly seats, eight Tier 2 airports are currently served from Chennai.
27/02/13 anna.aero
