pogonation

Air India to start daily direct flight from Delhi to Melbourne

This will be great once they enter *A.. Another option for Europe and Central Asia to Australia.

quarryking

The India - Australia sector could certainly benefit from the extra seats..Fares hit the roof during the Nov/ Dec season on this route.

B747-437B

Yet another vanity route with absolutely no justification for its operation other than some anecdotal tale about "lots of students". I'll give it 8 months.

AJLondon

+1.

Maybe some "mantri" has recently shipped off his son/daughter to study in Oz, and needs easy regular F/J rides at Y prices for the whole family!

quarryking

Do you think a flight ex MAA would work..??

SQ421

Is this a non-stop flight or will it be routed via SIN using it as a feeder hub?

Atleast they've kept the vanity factor somewhat in check and not gone for a route to SYD, which, IMHO would have even lesser numbers than MEL.

The tale about "lots of students" isn't anecdotal insofar as the actual number of Indian students in Australia in general and Melbourne in particular is concerned. The story about students demanding an Air India flight, on the other hand.... well, can't blame AI for reaching out to its target market, can we!

With AI yet to join *A, why anyone down under would fly on AI between MEL and DEL is beyond me. Perhaps AI is strictly targeting the O/D and VFR (mainly inbound from MEL!!) market between the two cities, which goes through peaks during February, July and November, coinciding with the start of Autumn and Spring sessions and Summer vacation at the universities down under.

As it currently stands, there's one stop options between DEL and MEL on SQ, TG, CX, MH, 9W/IT/QF.

DELANRDFW

According to circle mapper DEL-MEL is 6322 mile much shorter than DEL-JFK 7318 miles, so within range to start Non-Stop. Then what AI management decides is beyond anybody's imagination.

pogonation

Maybe AI will be targetting this flight mainly at the european market. There is a lot of demand EU-Aus and if AI can offer competitive fares then I don't see why they couldn't fill seats.

d3vski

Students demanding an Air India flight? yeah right as if Air India have ceded to such demands. The gujjus in the UK have been demanding Ahmedabad flights for years with no luck..........(apart from a brief period using crappy flyglobespan 767s).

The DEL-MEL may work with cheapo passengers connecting from LHR and other non stop flights who would not mind an 8 hr transit on the way back etc etc.

Any ideas what the premium fares are like?

B747-437B

Actually AMD-LHR operated for a number of years with the 744s (AI 121 on Fri/Sun) long before the Globespan 767s were on the scene. It used to be the easiest seat to nonrev into London on, so I am quite familiar with it! The Gujjus however were happy enough to fly via somewhere else to save £20 so it couldn't command the yields needed to maintain the flight.

d3vski

was it connected to a USA destination?

So true about the Gujjus. They demand a flight but refuse to pay an extra £10 to go direct and will endure ridiculous layovers in middle east!

B747-437B

The problem about students is that the market is price sensitive, low yield and that they all want to travel at the same time (viz. vacations/breaks). No matter how large the absolute market size, you always spill demand during the peak. In my experience, they are also among the highest cost passengers to service as their look-to-book ratio averages above 50 (compared to an industry average of 8) which in itself is not a problem, but when you combine it with the 3x greater call center resources they utilise as well, they become a market segment you don't really want to build your route on.

B747-437B

Nope. BOM-AMD-LHR-AMD-BOM. AI 121 on Friday/Sunday mornings and AI 120 leaving Friday/Sunday nights. Started around 2003 and ran until around 2007.

There was a one-off flight that ran ORD-LHR-AMD in September/October 2003 however that was a special flight due to Navratri.

soorox

There has been a lot of Indian interests in MEL, mostly students and families who live in Melbourne (VFR), every Year there are huge amounts of Indians traveling on SQ, TG, MH & even back tracking on EK to fly to India. And the market is growing strongly with double digit growth year on year, AI would also have NZ to feed NZ traffic exMEL onto DEL.

Having a direct option at the right price would be very attractive IMO, if AI could also get domestic connections that would be an added bonus.

India is said to be emerging into one of MEL's top markets, just behind China, where the growth is just phenomenal.

SQ421

I don't see AI making inroads into the Kangaroo route. Not any meaningful ones anyways. Even ignoring the transit visa costs associated with transiting in India (i'm unsure if visa less, airside transit is possible in India yet...), the fare on AI would have to be substantially lower than that offered by SQ/CX/EK/EY/QF for anyone apart from the most price sensitive traveler to make the switch. To be fair, I have not flown in and out of DEL international since after the renovation, but BOM is technically my "home" port, and even with the new facilities air side, I wouldn't want to contemplate a transit flight via BOM.

In case of IRROPS, each of the aforementioned airlines offer multiple flights into Australia from their hubs in SIN/DXB/AUH/HKG (and multiple flights a day between major European cities) into their hubs, which would tilt the balance in their favour; and the fact that Australian/NZ and EU Citizens get visa on arrival at each of these hubs - to make their delay a touch more comfortable, in case of substantial skewering of schedules as it happened after the QF32 incident