Originally Posted by
flyinsikh
If we ignore the student market, I think there are about 250,000 people of Indian origin majority residing in SYD & MEL., then the other satellite cities of ADL, PER, BNE.... Will be interesting to check the stats from the 2011 CENSUS and see the trend in the population,
Maybe they can also pull some of the trans-tasman Indian population to connect onto the MEL route??
Although the current connections are plentiful, with SQ,MH,TG,CX,QF/9W link providing excellent daily connections to DEL with decent connection times varying around 2hours transit time in SIN,BKK,HKG..
Here's an excerpt from my detailed post on this issue in another thread. Link to the post -
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/airli...l#post16102462
I doubt QF and SQ would be worried about the impact that AI will have on the market with a single daily MEL-DEL flight. The flight is fantastic if you are living in Victora, and your ultimate destination is DEL, or surrounds. Departing from any other city (viz. SYD/CBR/BNE) would require transiting at MEL and arriving into any other major city outside the DEL catchment area requires a transit at DEL (and sizable backtracking).
If a change of planes is required, why not do it in SIN, BKK, HKG, KUL and fly directly to your destination city; than changing planes in DEL.
Just as a quick aside - if V-Australia starts services on its own metal to India, rest assured they'll be timed to provide a convenient transit/connection onwards to LHR on Virgin Atlantic.