The Hindu : Tamil Nadu News : Jet Airways, Air Sahara eyeing South-East Asian market

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jan 04, 2005

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu

Jet Airways, Air Sahara eyeing South-East Asian market

By T.S. Shankar

CHENNAI, JAN. 3. With the Centre clearing the air for private airlines to fly to global destinations (barring the Gulf), Jet Airways and Air Sahara are eyeing the Singapore and Kuala Lumpur markets in South-East Asia. They hope to launch their operations by March-end.

According to indications, the Mumbai and New Delhi-based private airlines, initially, are working to link all major metros with Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Later, they will consider the long haul European and U.S. routes, as the carriers are scouting for extended range jets in the global market.

With Chennai already being served by Indian Airlines (IA) and Air India (AI), national carriers, the Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Malaysian Airlines, and the Sri Lankan Airlines offering Singapore connection from Colombo, the two new entrants will provide additional seats.

Aviation sources told The Hindu here today that at present the SIA alone had seven daily flights each to Chennai and New Delhi, 12 from Mumbai, three services each from Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Amritsar, thrice a week from Bangalore, four flights each from Kochi, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram — all linked by Silk Air (subsidiary of the SIA).

With so much of capacity offered by the SIA as a premier and dominant player between India and Singapore and more so out of south Indian points, giving ``operating rights'' to Jet Airways and Air Sahara is bound to trigger a fare war..

Presently, the average economy class fare between Chennai and Singapore ranges between Rs.18,000 and Rs.21,000. ``We will wait for the market forces to start the price war, but try to retain our share, which is now more than 30 per cent," say sources in the SIA.

The airline will continue wooing passengers travelling beyond Singapore — either to the U.S. or the European destinations — as the SIA would be the first airline to induct the 500-seater plus Super Jumbo-Airbus-380s by 2006.

The IA operates twice-daily service to Singapore from Chennai, daily service from Bangalore, five-days-a-week direct service from New Delhi and twice-a-week from New Delhi via Jaipur. It also operates daily flights to Kuala Lumpur from Chennai. AI has nine connections to Singapore and seven to Kuala Lumpur from Chennai.

The tsunami effect

Though the tsunami disaster has severely hit the Colombo and Thailand traffic, where private players recently provided air links, tour operators feel that there would be a considerable shift in the passenger traffic to the South-East Asian points, particularly to Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. And they want the Central and State Tourism authorities in India and the Tourism Malaysia and the Singapore Tourism Board to capitalise on the development.

`Welcome move'

N.R. Kumar, Southern Region Chairman of the Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI), says the new entrants will not only provide the customer the much-needed competition but also stimulate the market to bring down tariff, which has been on the rise for some years now.

The entry of Jet Airways and Air Sahara will also reiterate the role of travel agents in filling up seats of wide-bodied jets.

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