India gave its go ahead to Great Wall Airlines and China reciprocated with permissions to Jet Airways to transit through Shanghai to the United States.
MUMBAI: It is a matter of give and take. India gave its go ahead to Great Wall Airlines and China reciprocated with permissions to Jet Airways to transit through Shanghai to the United States.
What the diplomatic breakthrough has meant for Jet is that it can now crucially connect India to San Francisco before its Indian competitors, Air India and Kingfisher Airlines do. The competition is not taking it lying down. Sources in Air India indicated to DNA Money that it is examining possibilities to fly to San Francisco.
Currently the airline flies to Los Angeles in the west coast of US but that is through Frankfurt and not an eastern route.
And of course there is the much talked about plans of Kingfisher Airlines to connect Bangalore and Mumbai with San Francisco.
Saroj Dutta, executive director, Jet Airways, said, “We have been wanting to fly through to San Francisco via Shanghai for some time now. We haven’t received any official communication from China but there has been an announcement. We are in the process of completing the required formalities.”
He refused to indicate a possible date for the start of its daily operations but said that Jet would be taking delivery of two long haul aircraft in February, which would be used for servicing the route.
Ankur Bhatia, executive director, Bird Group, which represents the airline ticketing system called Amadeus, said, “The interest among Indian carriers to connect to the US west coast is also for the reason that long haul is more profitable and there are new market opportunities due to limited direct connectivity.”
San Francisco is the destination for the tens of thousands of Indian techies who live in the Silicon Valley. It is also often used as a gateway by Indian residents of the central and western United States,
Industry watchers say that those who could be affected most by Indian carriers’ US ambitions would be foreign carriers.
Currently players such as Singapore Airlines carry the bulk of traffic to San Francisco and this is a crucial sector for these airlines.
On the onslaught from Indian carriers affecting its fortunes in this sector, a Singapore Airlines spokesperson said, “India is a fast-growing market with enough space for many more aircrafts and frequencies offered by other airlines as well. We feel that there is enough room for everyone.”
The other winner coming out of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s China visit is Great Wall Airlines. It will ferry cargo between China and metros like Mumbai and Chennai.
n_john@dnaindia.net
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