oliver2002

Sure they do. So I have to pay 300-450$ to get to NYC (only DTW-LGA is cheap) plus 1000$ to BOM/DEL and another 100-200$ to CCU. Plus I have the lingering fear that AI will strand/delay me at some point, either cutting short my visit on the outbound or making me miss work on the inbound. Not really my cup of chai. Gimme a simple transfer via FRA on a relatively more reliable airline any day.

Yaatri

On NW, WAS-DEL K fare is $1700 plus while WAS-BKK K fare is just over $900 at the same time--- almost half the fare to a destination about 25% farther. Once the capacity to India improves, that should change. BUt I am not holding my breath for it.

oliver2002

Just like with everything else, the infrastructure can't grow fast enough to keep up with the sudden growth. It may sound strange, but only LH & 9W have aggressively expanded in terms of capacities, destinations and frequencies. That is the only way you can work around restricted bilaterals and congested airports.

gmailflyer

You hit upon a secret for J class travel to India. If you're traveling on your own dime and are cost sensitive but prefer J class, your best best is to route via BKK. Flts to BKK seem to be full in Y and not that full in J and so you often see very competitive J fares (and local market conditions do support this). With increased connectivity to BKK from various Indian cities you don't lose much on schedule (BLR had two flts a day on some peak days this winter; JetLite without J class is starting Amritsar to BKK I believe).

I do hope that Indian routes get competitive to BKK. I don't expect J fares to India to ever go to the low levels of BKK fares even with increased capacity. Carriers expect different things from Indian market than from BKK market.

hyho61

deleted - duplication

hyho61

Not sure if there is enough traffic for a daily A345 on BLR-SFO or for MAA-SFO. It may be feasible if Kingfisher code shares this flight or joins an alliance, or the flight is SFO-BLR-MAA or HYD.

The reason LH and other airlines are full because they draw passengers from many cities in US and from several european cities to BLR.

flyboy777

Chennai I don't know about because I don't know too much about the city but Bangalore - San Francisco is almost a guarenteed revenue earner with a non-stop. Why? It links the two silicon valleys of the worlds with businessmen & freight (perhaps the most important sources of income for an airline) flying between them like crazy. Whilst there are literally dozens of multistop options (over the Pacific as well as the Atlantic), this flight will generate enough demand because it is a non-stop.

enjoystravel

I fly SFO-BLR a lot. Even though I like to believe that no-stop SFO-BLR will be a dense route, I'm not convinced that it is. First of all, BA, AF, CX, LH, SQ, TG, 9W, etc. are not going to let the non stop flights steal all traffic. This means that they'll offer competitive fares on their hub flights (all except CX already fly to BLR from their hubs and CX will use DragonAir to fly to BLR in 2008; 9W is expected to launch BLR-BRU connecting to its European hub when the new BLR airport get going soon). On a recent BA flt (7 AM dept BLR, connecting LHR at 13:30 PM), I found out that there were just < 20 pax in the entire 747 on a fairly packed plane connecting to SFO. LH did have a slightly higher traffic on a recent BLR-FRA-SFO flt. I think while non-stop will be attractive, many pax will choose one-stop flts for FF reasons or to avoid coach on extended flts especially due to price competitiveness. I am not yet sure if both AI and King Fisher can operate non-stops on this route this year. We'll have to wait and see.

The one factor that may help BLR-SFO be lucrative to the airlines is if they can pick up time sensitive cargo contracts especially of high value, light weight items. I don't know how big this market is as neither SFO or BLR are major gateways for physical goods exports.

AI obviously believes that DEL and BOM are higher priority for non-stops to the US. BLR-SFO seems to be the next on the list. For Kingfisher, BLR being its home base BLR-SFO does make sense.

With the non-stop to BLR there will be some connecting traffic to South India that will prefer BLR over congested DEL or BOM. Local connections from BLR to MAA and HYD and smaller towns in AP, Tamil Nadu and Kerala should be a breeze. I sure hope BLR-SFO becomes reality soon and becomes profitable to multiple carriers.

flyboy777

Your taking it out of perspective. Yes, BA & other airlines will be keen to keep the traffic, but an daily A340-500 (about 2/3 the size of a B747-400) can't make up every single seat available between the two cities. This is a premium non-stop service that no-doubt will probably be more expensive than the indirects anyway. The hints we're getting from the press releases is that this ain't going to be an ordinary economy class...

Time sensitive freight will also fill this flight very easily & pay for itself & perhaps even subsidise Y. That said, I doubt such a move would be very wise since the route is in very high demand. The connecting traffic issue will only boost loads since there are currently no non-stop flights from the West Coast to India or any flights at all to the west coast by an Indian carrier.

Finally, carriers such as BA make plenty of money on the O&D demand for their San Francisco flights. BA fly double daily to SFO using B747s with 104+ flat beds each direction everyday. The difference in 20 connecting passengers, most probably in Y would be relatively minimal. Connecting passenger whilst good for loads, are not necessarily good for yields which is what ultimately matters.

Flyingloweroverdover

Apparently Kingfisher will start LHR flights at "around the same time" as the SFO route, although not necessarily with an A340-500

http://www.businesstraveller.com/new...ow-this-summer

flyboy777

I beleive the intial Heathrow flights (BOM & BLR) will be operated by A330-200s...

http://flyertalk.com/forum/showthrea...ght=kingfisher
post #21.

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

5x A340-500s used for BLR-SFO followed by BLR-EWR. Each needs one bird in either direction. Could possibly mean that a sole A340-500 may fly daily to India although I think the 5th aircraft will be delivered much later than June...

B747-437B

Change in plans. They will only operate the BOM-LHR route this summer, effective from 28AUG08. The timings will require both A330s to run the route.

IT 021/022
BOM dep 0920 LHR arr 1450 dep 2200 BOM arr 1130+1

They should be making a formal announcement about these flights within the next few weeks.

Yaatri

BLR-SFO nonstop is not likely to materialise anytime soon. There just isn't enough traffic to justify a nonstop. The route maybe important to a core group but I am not so sue it would be a revenue generator overall. With severe downturn in the U.S economy and it's spill over to the Indian IT exports combined with higher Rupee (although it had gone down the last few weeks) the travel budget of companies in BLR and SFO would come under severe pressure.

flyboy777

Why the change in slots... it makes for a very inefficent use of aircraft. I guess the A330s will be employed on domestic sectors or something...

If you read previous posts, you'll see why there's plenty of demand up front, down back (don't forget the connections) & down below in the hold. If you discount the weak American market, the Indian market will simply exploit this flight themselves...

I thought the flight was to begin in the late summer, is that soon enough?

cj001f

^ to not transiting DEL or BOM