Singapore Airlines, which had rationalised capacity on its India routes early this year, plans to re-instate some of the capacity in the second quarter of 2010. There are also plans to introduce better cabin and seat products for business class on its India operations.
“We have rationalised capacity on some of our India routes since early-2009. Around April-June 2010, we envisage plans to re-instate some of the capacity, depending on the market conditions next year,” Mr C.W. Foo, General Manager India, Singapore Airlines, told Business Line.
For instance, Singapore Airlines, which had 10 flights a week to Bangalore and Chennai earlier, now has daily flights only. And on the Mumbai and New Delhi sectors, capacity has come down from 14 flights a week earlier to 11 now.
“In addition to re-instating some of the capacity, we also plan to deploy better and new aircraft products on our India flights, including Bangalore,” said Mr Foo.
The airline plans to introduce new cabin and seat products in its business class on “selected Indian routes, but we need to firm up these plans,” he added.
Mr Foo said that these efforts would “enable us to align ourselves with the recovery of the market.”
According to him, the seat factor for the airline’s overall network was around 72 per cent for the April-June quarter this year, and “we have improved from that in the past three months,” said Mr Foo.
He added that the airline cut capacity across the network by 11 per cent for this financial year, on account of the recession. “Our future plans would be to first re-instate capacity and grow further,” he said.
During an informal chat with journalists during a familiarisation trip, organised by Singapore Airlines, Mr Foo said that notwithstanding the recession and capacity reduction, the airline had introduced a daily A380 service to Melbourne from Singapore.
The airline has already deployed A380s on its Sydney, Tokyo, London, Paris and Hong Kong routes.
Commenting that the boycott by travel agents has not impacted business for them in India, Mr Foo said, “We have found other ways to offset the impact of the boycott. For instance, we reach out directly to our customers and also have campaigns in place to mitigate the impact of the boycott.”
There are many travel agents in the country who continue to sell Singapore Airlines tickets, because “they see the relevance to change to the transaction or fee-based business model that we advocate,” he added.
However, Mr Foo said that the change in business model was “not to offend the travel agents, but to give consumers a wider choice”. Travel agents continue to play a relevant role in the market by providing value-added services to consumers according to their needs, he added.
What has also helped the airline, according to Mr Foo, is the fact that purchase value of international air ticket has become much more affordable for Internet purchasers. “The value of our air ticket along with promotional offers has been much more attractive,” he said.
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