Air France reducing capacity to India

Air France has revealed that it will cut capacity to India in its upcoming Winter schedule. Chief amongst them is the reduction of capacity to Mumbai where the flights will not be served on an Airbus A330-200 instead of an Boeing 777-200 ER. Delhi also sees a reduction from a daily Boeing 747-400 to a 4 weekly service on A340-300 and the remaining 3 days on Boeing 747-400. This is expected to correct some of the current over capacity in the Indian skies leading to major loss of revenue and profit.

Cathay Pacific to fly daily from Delhi to Bangkok

With Thailand exempting the tourist visa fee for three months from Thursday, Hong Kong’s flagship carrier Cathay Pacific Airways has announced the launch of a daily non-stop flight from here to Bangkok from March 30. 

“Bangkok is not new to us. It is well known how popular and affordable Bangkok is. We believe that there is untapped potential and this new route promises to serve the unmet needs,” Tom Wright, the airline’s general manager for India, Middle-East, Africa and Pakistan said at a press conference here on Friday. 

Bangkok has one of the highest inflow of tourists and is considered a short getaway destination. Thailand currently gives Indian citizens visa on arrival for a stay not exceeding 15 days. 

The Delhi-Bangkok non-stop flight will take five-and-a-half hours. It will leave New Delhi at 3.30 am and reach Bangkok at 8.55 am. The airline will leave Bangkok at 5.25 pm and reach New Delhi at 7.45 pm (local time). 

At present the airlines flies to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore and has almost 44 flights to these cities. It has two daily flights from Delhi to Hong Kong and 10 flights a week from Mumbai. 

The airline also intends to strengthen its cargo network. “We are looking at expanding our cargo business in India and we see a huge opportunity here,” said Wright. 

The carrier, however, has deferred plans for the construction of a new cargo terminal at the Hong Kong International Airport in order to keep capacity expansion in line with market demand. 

Cathay Pacific posted a net loss of $85.5 billion in the first half of 2008, against a net profit of about $333 million in the same period a year before. 

Cathay Pacific’s passenger load factor, or the proportion of seats filled on its flights, fell by 5.3 per cent in 2008 from a year earlier to 75.5 per cent.

China Eastern Airlines to increase frequency and open new routes from India

China Eastern Airlines, which currently connects two Indian cities, Delhi and Kolkata, with Shanghai, Beijing and Kunming in China is planning to increase its frequency of operations to India from next month. The airline will add one more flight on its Delhi-Shanghai- Beijing route, which currently has a frequency of four flights a week. It will also increase the frequency from three flights a week to daily on the Kolkata-Kunming by the end of next month. Although final clearances are still awaited, the airline sources are hopeful of positive response from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
According to Edward Zhu Xuemin, Chief Representative-India, China Eastern Airlines Kunming as a tourist destination has a long history, as well as a lot to offer in terms of tourism products. “Our Kolkata –Kunming flight offers the shortest connectivity. It takes hardly two-and-half hours by air. Kunming also offers excellent connectivity to other destinations in mainland China. We can offer good packages to travellers from Delhi and Kolkata to Kunming and Shanghai, etc.,” stated Xuemin while addressing a recent meeting between members of the Indian travel trade and a delegation of Kunming Municipal Tourism Bureau and its travel trade members in Delhi.

Jet codeshares with Brussels Airlines to fly Paris, Manchester

Jet Airways today announced expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines to connect Paris and Manchester from October 26, with the flights operating via the Belgian airline’s European hub in Brussels.

Manchester is Jet Airways’ second codeshare destination in the UK, after Birmingham, in addition to the airline’s direct daily services to London from Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar.

With the expansion of its existing codeshare arrangement, the premier private carrier now offers connectivity between Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, on one hand, and Birmingham, Madrid, Barcelona, Lyon, Berlin Tempelhof, Paris and Manchester, via Brussels, on the other, through its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines.

“With the expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines, Jet Airways now offers its passengers enhanced connectivity on the India-Europe sector, via its world-class, passenger-friendly hub in Brussels,” Jet CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said in a statement and claimed that his airline was “fast becoming the carrier of choice for passengers on the sector”.

Jet flies daily to Brussels from three gateway points of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

The private carrier, with a fleet of 85 aircraft, currently has codeshare agreements with Brussels Airlines, American Airlines, Air Canada, Qantas, ANA and Etihad, offering its passengers unmatched connectivity across Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and Japan from India.

Finnair to reduce flights from India

Helsinki-based Finnair has plans to optimise its Indian operations through flights rationalisation, a top company official said.
The number of flights would be reduced to 10 from 13, which the airline currently operates from New Delhi and Mumbai.Of the 13 flights, seven services are from Delhi and six from Mumbai. All are bound for Helsinki.    

Finnair is phasing out its existing fleet of MD-11 aircraft and replacing them with Airbus 330 and 340, once the delivery of these 51 aircraft is made, Finnair will enhance the frequencies to India. The delivery of these aircrafts will commence from May 2009, Stolbow said. The airline has also placed orders for Airbus 350, and it is expected to receive the first aircraft in 2014.

Finnair had started its India operation in October 2006 with a flight to Delhi from Helsinki. In June last year, it added Mumbai as its second destination in the country.

Longest runway in India inaugurated

New Delhi’s Airport successfully carried out its tests yesterday on the 4430m long runway which will be the longest in India. The runway is expected to be thrown open for general operations on August 28th.  Officials carried out “a trial take-off and landing by an Air India aircraft without any passengers,”

The new runway will nearly double the airport’s peak-hour capacity from 35-40 aircraft landings and take-offs to about 75. The two currently operational parallel runways handle nearly 700 flights a day.

“The runway is equipped with a state-of-the art instrument landing system at both ends that will allow landing even when visibility is as low as 50 metres (yards),”

New Delhi, host of the 2010 Commonwealth Games, is also sprucing up infrastructure to allow carriers like Emirates, British Airways and Air France to operate Airbus’s flagship A380 on routes to the Indian capital.

Brussels Airlines and Jet Airways expand cooperation

Brussels Airlines and Jet Airways announced that they intend to expand their deal, in order to work together more effectively on a larger number of routes. According to the terms of the new agreement, the two airlines would enter into a code-sharing arrangement on the Brussels to Bangkok route.

Passengers interested in flying between these cities should, however, keep in mind that they will be required to catch an onward connection in Delhi, to the Thai capital city. Thanks to this agreement between Brussels Airlines and Jet Airways , catching that connection will be relatively convenient, as the code-share flight from Brussels will arrive in Delhi just in time for passengers to transfer to the Delhi to Bangkok service.

Jet Airways uses Boeing B-737 and Airbus A-330 planes to connect Delhi to Bangkok and now that the code-sharing agreement is in place, each of these flights will bear the “SN” Brussels Airlines code.