Qantas is withdrawing from mainland China as it battles intense competition from local carriers. From July 28, the Sydney to Shanghai route will be scrapped. The Australian flag carrier cited “low demand” for the decision.
02.05.2024 - 15:43 / skift.com / Campbell Wilson / Tim Clark / Air India / Etihad Airways / Gordon Smith
Air India’s new flagship has made its debut on the international stage. On Wednesday night, Flight AI995 departed Delhi for Dubai, operated by an Airbus A350-900 for the first time.
Until this week, the new widebody plane had been flying domestically, linking key Indian cities including Chennai and Hyderabad.
Air India’s decision to place the A350 on the Delhi to Dubai route before any other is notable.
The UAE city is one of the largest transit hubs anywhere on the planet. Emirates, its hometown airline, is the world’s biggest international carrier, with almost a million passengers flying through Dubai each week.
Data from Cirium Diio shows Emirates alone provides tens of thousands of seats a week to and from India.
Along with other mega-airports in the region such as Doha (home to Qatar Airways) and Abu Dhabi (home to Etihad), the Gulf serves as a critical location for global connections. The revitalized Air India wants a much bigger slice of this lucrative segment.
The national airline is in the middle of a five-year transformation plan that promises to bring Air India back to its world-class glory. One of the key metrics for success is removing the need for so many Indian passengers to transit through the Middle East.
By bringing the A350 to Emirates’ home and hub, Air India is making a statement of intent. The airline wants to fly more people directly to India, as well as being a notable onward transit location in its own right.
Speaking at the Skift India Summit in March, Air India’s CEO Campbell Wilson, identified what he believes to be the carrier’s competitive advantage over ‘one-stop’ regional rivals.
“It’s no wonder that some relatively small geographies or population bases want to tap larger, faster growing ones to augment what they don’t have themselves. Upwards of 70% to 90% of people are not going to that place, they’re going through that place,” he said.
Wilson told Skift that India will become less reliant on overseas carriers, thanks to a revitalized national airline: “Those passengers can be served by an Indian carrier or indeed a carrier from the ultimate destination market. And I think given the state of Indian airlines, and the fact that they’re very nascent and newly privatized and the market is developing professional modality, I think it’s appropriate for India that time be accorded for the maturity to come, for the growth to come, for the 470 aircraft that we’ve purchased to come, and for us to connect India non-stop to many places around the world, so people have a much faster, much more convenient, much less emissive way to get from A to B.”
Sir Tim Clark, the president of Emirates Airline has previously rebuffed the competitive threat posed by the ‘new’ Air India. “I
Qantas is withdrawing from mainland China as it battles intense competition from local carriers. From July 28, the Sydney to Shanghai route will be scrapped. The Australian flag carrier cited “low demand” for the decision.
Emirates is already in the midst of a massive makeover of its fleet. Now, the Dubai-based carrier is planning to give even more of its long-haul jets a cabin face-lift — one that will ultimately bring its state-of-the-art premium economy seats to more cities.
What do American Airlines, British Airways, Delta, and Air France each have in common? They’ve all reported red-hot demand for premium cabins in recent months – and they’re not alone.
Even by Saudi standards, the goals are ambitious: By 2030, the country wants 330 million passengers to pass through its airports annually, up from around 112 million last year.
Air India’s low-cost subsidiary Air India Express canceled 85 flights on Thursday amid mass sick leave by cabin crew. The cancellations affected almost one-quarter of its entire flying program. In a statement, the airline said that it would operate 283 flights on Thursday.
Most travelers see little more than the duty-free store during a short connection, but there’s an alternative approach that’s gaining momentum.
India is rapidly emerging as a crucial source market for global tourism, driven by significant economic growth, demographic shifts, and infrastructural improvements, as highlighted on the Arabian Travel Market (ATM) 2024 Future Stage, as the Middle East’s leading travel and tourism event returned to the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC) for its 31st year. During the session Unlocking the True Potential of Indian Travellers, Virendra Jain, CEO and Co-Founder of VIDEC, a travel, tourism and hospitality boutique advisory and analytics firm, shared key insights, including market opportunity assessments, channel and distribution analysis, characteristics and behaviours of Indian travellers and projections of Indian outbound travel trends over the next decade.
Indian airlines will account for half of the country’s international passenger traffic by the 2027-28 financial year, according to a report by credit rating agency CRISIL Ratings. That’s up from 43% this fiscal year, with India’s international passenger traffic at around 70 million.
India is actively promoting itself as the next big wedding destination. At the first “Wed in India” Expo ongoing in Jaipur till Wednesday, tourism ministry official Manisha Saxena said that the rapid infrastructure development across India is aiding destination weddings.
Emirates is famed for its extravagant service onboard its current fleet of Boeing 777s and Airbus A380s. It’s therefore little surprise that expectations are high for its incoming A350s – an aircraft that has been years in the making.
Dubai, situated in one of the world’s driest regions, was hit with a second bout of heavy rains and strong winds this week — just two weeks after the desert metropolis was covered in a year’s worth of rain in the span of 12 hours.
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