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| Edited By: Sindhu Bhattacharya |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 18, 2018, 03:18 AM IST
Air India plans to start a daily service to Melbourne from Delhi soon and has already received permission from the Ministry of Civil Aviation for this flight.
The carrier’s flight to the kangaroo land comes after two previous attempts—in June and September last year—to begin such a service were struck down by the ministry because it found the route unviable.
Can the ailing AI, still reeling from the after-effects of a crippling pilot strike as also the strictures put on it by oil companies, really afford to take up another international route where breakeven may not be quick? An aviation expert said that such routes take at least a year to break even so that AI’s finances would not be helped by daily flights to the Australian city just yet.
But a ministry official said AI has done its homework and the flight will do well. “A private low-cost carrier like IndiGo also starts flights on the assumption that 60% inaugural passenger load means the flight will break even.....IndiGo is scientific about these things. If IndiGo can do this, I think it’s only fair that AI is allowed to start flights on the same assumption of load factors. We have spoken to many airlines abroad and in India before permitting this service.”
He said that Australian carrier, Qantas, which runs a code-share flight with Jet Airways on the Mumbai-Singapore-Melbourne route at present, may be withdrawing from the Singapore leg. So will Jet take over the entire journey and become a direct rival of AI on this route? Jet is certainly interested in the Australian market and has been evaluating the viability of flights to Melbourne as well as Sydney.
Travel agents said there has been talk of a Melbourne service for quite some time now but no schedule has been filed with them till now. But some time back the carrier had said in a statement that “the Ministry of Civil Aviation has approved our request and granted Air India the traffic rights to operate seven services per week on the Delhi-Melbourne sector. The direct link to Melbourne brings to fruition a long-standing demand from Indians, including many students studying/settled in Australia.”
It said Sydney is the second destination in Australia which is being evaluated.
How contentious is AI’s proposal to start a Melbourne service can be gauged from the fact that the AI independent directors had strongly opposed this move last year.
