The Hindu : Business : Advantage Air India

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 10, 2004

Business

Business

Advantage Air India - II

WINGS AND Wheels attempts this week to answer the many questions that last week's article, "Advantage Air India", seems to have raised in readers' minds, partly a result of trying to fit a complex techno-economic argument in about 600 words.

The first part of the argument is that Air India should stop being Euro centric with respect to its route structure by realising that stopping in Europe was only necessary with earlier generations of aircraft. Its seems strange that it should choose to fly to Los Angeles via Frankfurt in 2004 when it is faster and cheaper to cross the Pacific via a convenient point in East Asia such as Hong Kong, Shanghai, or Taipei.

The second is that our national carrier should accept that its strength lies in being a niche player efficiently carrying passengers and cargo to and from different points in India to various points in North America and West Asia, with Europe essentially a sideshow. This implies that it needs to have appropriate point-to-point services with medium capacity aircraft. That is, fortunately, already happening with West Asian services from different cities in India, but not with respect to the U.S. where a Delhi and Mumbai centred model continues to hold sway. Contrast that with Lufthansa that operates an always full, and therefore very profitable, service from Bangalore to Frankfurt and onwards to North America while throwing a few crumbs to Air India by way of `code share' seats.

This second argument also implies that Air India should move away from large aircraft such as Boeing 747s operating a `hub and spoke' route network in conjunction with Indian Airlines, to using smaller, but no less efficient, aircraft on long, `thin' routes which would not justify less than full operation with `jumbos.' The Airbus A 340 and the Boeing 777 are outstanding examples of today's generation of medium capacity, long-range aircraft, but the all-new Boeing 7E7 would fill the bill much better with claimed operating economies of 10 per cent and more. Unfortunately it will not be available until 2008 with ANA (of Japan) `launching' the aircraft programme by ordering the first short-range (6,500 km) 7E7-3s and long-range (15,700 km) 7E7-8s late last month.

If Air India also became an early customer for the new aircraft, either by buying outright or by leasing, it would get them very cheaply (at a discounted purchase price of perhaps $275,000 per seat) and at one stroke become one of the most competitive international airlines as far as long, thin routes are concerned. On the other hand, these routes could be `seeded' in the next few years by cheaply leasing used Airbuses or Boeings taking advantage of the currently depressed airline market.

Getting back to Air India's proposed service to Los Angeles, flying via (say) Hong Kong from Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkata or Mumbai does not imply that the <145,4>return flight should take the same route in reverse. An intriguing possibility is that it could be conveniently flown via Dallas (or Houston) and Tripoli or Benghazi (in Libya). The advantage of the latter route is that fuel is cheap (in Texas and in Libya), the total route length is about the same especially while flying over the uncrowded southern half of the North Atlantic and North Africa and finally, since the aircraft would be flying with prevailing winds rather than against them, it would be faster and consume less fuel. The `doubting Toms' ignorant of stratospheric wind patterns probably don't know that Singapore Airlines' new non-stop service to Los Angeles (using Airbus A340-500s) takes 15 hours eastbound from Singapore, but no less than18 ½ hours coming back!

India's location with respect to the western and central parts of the U.S. and Canada make this unusual routing no less appropriate for cities such as Chicago, San Francisco, Seattle, Toronto and Vancouver.

The icing on the cake is that our circadian rhythms make `jet lag' much less severe while flying eastwards making this routing very comfortable in addition to being fast and economical.

Champagne any one?

C. Manmohan Reddy

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Business

News Update

Stories in this Section

E-mail based epistolary novel

Stocks await poll results

Some options to counter menace

Advantage Air India - II

Storage: time to say the `V' word