The move by the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) on Monday of lifitng the ban on Airbus A380s may not have a major impact on the Indian airline industry.
The A380s would now be allowed at airports at Delhi, Mumbai, Hyderabad and Bangalore, which are currently equipped to handle them and have the required infrastructure, while Mumbai's Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) will be the first to benefit out of this decision as the services of jumbo aircraft is expected to start from here first; probably in over a month.
Kingfisher Airlines was the only domestic airline that placed an order for jumbo A-380s. Experts said that the domestic carriers will slowly take a decision on deploying the same, depending on the profitability of the route.
"The cost of acquisition of the aircraft (A380) is higher and also the airlines will have to spend an additional cost on training the staff on the same. Hence deploying an aircraft like this will require lot of analysis, on whether it will be profitable to introduce, replacing the existing ones," said an aviation expert who refused to quoted.
Major international airlines like Singapore Airlines, Emirates and Lufthansa are likely to introduce these aircraft in the Indian skies. "We will be reviewing our existing operations and look forward to serving Indian travellers with our flagship aircraft in new future" said a spokesperson for Emirates airline.
The operations of the A380s would be subject to overall traffic entitlements within the bilateral Air Service Agreements (ASAs) with different countries.
According to the A380 manufacturer Airbus, so far, over 120 A380s are being operated by the 10 of the world's leading airlines and nine out of these airlines have scheduled flights into India. The A380 has visited nearly 160 airports of all sizes and in all continents of the world.
"The aircraft would be most suitable for the metro to metro traffic, for example – Delhi-Mumbai or Mumbai-Bangalore. While internationally, high traffic routes like Dubai, Singapore or certain European regions will be attractive for the deployment of A-380s," said Amrit Pandurangi, senior director, Deloitte in India.
"However, any kind of modernisation of the fleet is always good for the airlines and the passengers. Having an aircraft like A380 would help in bringing the maintenance costs down and is more environment friendly. Further it will also help in bringing the airfares down, due to aircraft's higher capacity. J Dasgupta, GM (Air traffic control) recently told dna that the A380 will bring down the cost of the air tickets.
The restriction was lifted by MoCA after several years of demands by major foreign carriers, which was imposed in 2008 as the government then felt that the double-decker, wide-body and long-haul jets would help foreign airlines to take away a large chunk of global traffic which could be detrimental to the Indian carriers' interests.
Box on A380:
The A380 are wide bodied, double decked, four engine aircraft. The experts claim that the operation of the aircraft lowers the airfare for the passenger, as it can accommodate 853 passengers in all-economy class or 525 passengers in usual three-class type sitting arrangement.
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