Almost three years after acquiring Air India, the Tata Group is sharply separating the focus of its two airlines, building multiple hubs in the country and challenging foreign airlines on international flights. We have finalized plans for expansion and consolidation, including:
Full-service airline Air India has a group-wide fleet of around 300 aircraft, serving international markets and domestic routes with premium traffic demands, while low-cost carrier Air India Express operates the remaining will focus on domestic flights and short-haul international flights. root.
The company is realigning its network and separating the two carriers’ markets, which has already reduced overlap. Percentage-wise, the overlap of all routes decreased from 20% to 12%. In the short-range segment, the overlap rate decreased from 26% to 5%.
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Nipun Agarwal, Chief Commercial Officer, Air India, said: Air India’s strategy is to focus on its hub airports – Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. ”
Air India wants to consolidate traffic from Southeast Asia, the Far East and Saaruk into hubs before transporting it to long-haul and ultra-long-haul markets in Europe, the US and Canada. This will put Indian locations in competition with West Asian locations such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha.
“Our focus will be on building strong corridors in hubs and all other point-to-point opportunities,” Agarwal added. Approximately 26 million passengers traveled on long-haul routes in FY24, generating $16 billion in revenue.
Air India’s India hub strategy is designed based on the skewed flight patterns of its customers. At least 76%, or 20 million, of long-haul international passengers took connecting flights, while only 6 million took direct flights.
Air India, which dominates long-haul routes to Western Europe, the continental U.S. and Canada, says Indian airlines have a market share of just 21% in this sector, or 6 million passengers. “The 21% share of long-haul routes contributes to over 50% of Air India’s revenue,” Agarwal added.
Air India’s capacity addition plan will see it add 570 aircraft over the next 10 years, supplied by Boeing and Airbus. Over the past three years, just over 90 aircraft have been added: 50 narrowbodies, 6 widebodies and 45 leased aircraft. Air India’s pace of aircraft additions has been faster than Vistara’s in its nearly 10 years of operation.
“We are introducing a common group loyalty program.Currently the program is only for Air India customers, but we will soon include Air India Express in this program.Our enrollment numbers are , which has increased from 30,000 to 150,000 people per month,” Agarwal said.
Air India’s domestic hub strategy will be influenced by the two greenfield airports it plans to build near Delhi and Mumbai. The company said it is working closely with the operators of Noida and Navi Mumbai airports to develop a strategy.
“If you are using a hub-and-spoke model, it is definitely difficult to operate from two different airports in the same region.However, given the capacity challenges at Delhi and Mumbai airports, we have decided to We can think more creatively. We need to balance the capabilities we have with the level of optimization we can perform,” Agarwal added.
