Kingfisher closer to flying intl
 

Interesting... that they are trying piggyback on their Air Deccan relationship. I hope they succeed. If they start flying, their first route may be BLR-SFO. But I doubt there is enough traffic for a daily flight on Airbus 340, may be combined with HYD (via BLR) and/or MAA (via BLR), it is possible. Contrary to popular belief, there are not that many passengers who travel from BLR to SFO or vice versa.

I would refute that argument - I think that there would be a very good amount of traffic - and that is why Jet (9w) is thinking/planning of BLR-PVG-SFO...

hyho61, What is your source of data for BLR-SFO being a thin route. Reports by country managers of LH and BA in the past seemed to indicate that a good amount of traffic they're carrying out of BLR seems to be BLR-SFO. There also seems to be a lot of pacific routing TG, CX (via BKK/SIN) and SQ on the BLR-SFO route.

A competitively priced BLR-SFO seems to me would have fairly high load factors. The pricing and marketing strategy is important. AI seems to be struggling with BOM-NYC while DL and CO don't seem to have problems. I think KF (using Deccan rights or under Deccan brand) should be able to build this non-stop route pretty quickly as long as they don't target super high fare premiums.

My understanding from latest press reports is that Naresh Goyal is talking about 9W flying BOM-PVG-SFO now instead of BLR-PVG-SFO. The projected launch date is Feb 2008. This may be because the new BLR airport will be truly ready only in April (technically late March) or because they feel BOM-PVG is a better option than BLR-PVG.

I still am not clear if Indian carriers have the rights to carry pax on PVG-SFO. Naresh Goyal seems to be imply that but I'll wait for authoritative voices on this board (such as Sean) to weigh in.

they will have rights to carry PVG-SFO traffic as per the India-China Bilateral (5th freedom on 14 weekly frequencies on the way to or beyond China)

Kingfisher plans to start services to LHR during the summer.

IT 021/022 (eff. 01JUN08)
BOM dep 1300 LHR arr 1830 dep 2100 BOM arr 1030+1

IT 031/032 (eff. 01AUG08)
BLR dep 0645 LHR arr 1300 dep 1500 BLR arr 0515+1

All flights planned to operate with 217-seat A330-200s.

Whether this will actually come about though......

Why on earth do we need another BOM-LHR service? (with almost/no connections to the US)

Does IT really hope to grab a big share of BA's premium customers flying to the UK? That's the only play I can think of that actually makes sense.

I'm guessing not, at least with these timings. At a minimum, they should synchronize timings so they can scissor/rotate planes.

I think they will do what they have done on domestic routes in India - onward connections, NW and/or DL.

Would be nice if Kingfisher joins the skyteam alliance as well..

If I were to speculate, this is very likely to happen. With Air Sahara becoming JetLite, Jet Airways is likely to join One World. Air India, now Indian has long been rumoured to go with Star Alliance. It's unlikley that among, Air India/Indian, Jet Airways and Kingfisher, two will join the same alliance. Indian market will be neatly divided among the three alliances.

Air Deccan/Kingfisher gets in principal approval
 

MoCA has given in principal approval for Air-Deccan application to fly abroad and have also informed IT that if they take majority stake in Air-Deccan they can fly abroad with DN certificate.!

So probably some short haul international operations might start from IATA Summer 08!

There are loads of Indians that live in the UK. Onward connections are irrelavant at the London end, where they will simply milk the market. BA hasn't suffered from Jets appearance in London, nor Air Sahara, nor Air India since they've all considerable expanded in the UK-India market. BA have expanded considerably in India recently, & is now there 3rd largest country in terms of revenue. The connections in Bombay are going to be critical for IT, as that is where they're going to fight it out with 9W etc.

Also, if they weren't going to fly to London as there first international, where would they go. Jump straight in at the deepend in the USA??

This is great news. I can't wait to see the onboard product.

I think there is big scope for huge increase in flights to India. For decades journey to/from India was based on bilateral flying rights. Since Air-India never went full, once the foreign airlines were full people had not choice but to fly Air-India. That worked fine until after 1991 when the Indian economy opened up and India was loosing business because IT workers could not fly out. Then came liberalization, which is still no where on the lines of the UK-US deregulated sector. Consequently load factors from/to India are high. Thus most airlines can charge higher amounts thus adding to the cost of doing business in India. Opening up the sector will provide more choices and improve competition and bring down cost of travel leading to increased tourism. In the past, I have cancelled my trips to India and chosen to vacation in other parts of the world due to being wait-listed in the India sector. That is Australia - Singapore no problem, but not Singapore - India. Similarly US-Europe no problem, but wait listed for economy fare from Europe to India or more commonly outward bound from India.

It would be great to see more private airlines from India flying international. It will bring much needed competition to this sector which for years has been the cash cow for foreign airlines. Qantas is having a similar monopoly on the US sector, where it has for years prevented SIA picking up Australian passengers onwards to US west coast.

So would they fly the plane painted as Air Deccan but offer IT onboard product since the operating cert is DN?