British Airways bullish on India, plans expansion
The London-headquartered airline, which stepped up its services to India from 19 last year to 43 this year, is set to focus on India with more services and tie-ups called special pro-rate agreements.
By Gireesh Chandra Prasad, TNN |
LONDON: For British Airways (BA), India is the future. The London-headquartered airline, which stepped up its services to India from 19 last year to 43 this year, is set to focus on India with more services and tie-ups called special pro-rate agreements. It already has a discount-and-business-sharing tie-up with Air Sahara.
BA CEO Willie Walsh said India is the second most important market for the airline after North America. He said there is a good demand for services to and fro India, which account for a significant proportion of the company’s revenues.
He, however, declined to give specific figures saying it would be difficult to calculate since bookings are done in other countries too by professionals flying into India. “We started a weekly service to Bangalore 12 months ago and now we have one service a day,” Mr Walsh said.
Hyderabad and Seoul are the next two cities the airline is now eyeing in this region, BA’s area general manager for Asia-Pacific, Robbie Baird said. BA is awaiting its fleet expansion in India, Mr Walsh said. The company has placed an order for 45 new aircraft to add to its 114 strong fleet and to replace some of the old ones.
With the Indian economy booming, many professionals are flying to North America and Canada for business as well as leisure, said Gavin Halliday, BA’s area commercial manager for the Middle East, Asia and the Pacific.
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Although BA is facing some competition from Jet Airways, Air-India and Delta, which recently started a direct flight from JFK to Mumbai, the company is not considering any fare cut as of now. It believes service standards and the comforts of the upgraded flat bed for which it has invested £100m recently, would fetch more passengers.
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