So, who’s there in the Indian skies?

The Indian aviation sector has been a battleground for various aviation players, ever since the skies were opened up in the early / mid 1990s. Many players, including several domestic ones, tried to make their impact on Indian aviation. And whether by design or otherwise, some of them did. While a few offered premium service on economy segments, and others brought about changes in legislation regarding consumption of alcohol in the Indian airspace. Many of them have also passed on…names like ModiLuft, Damania Airways, Paramount, and, more recently Kingfisher, come to mind.

Now that the grain has been shifted and the chaff cleared, what’s left? It turns out, quite surprisingly, that there’s a fairly big lot that’s left! Here’s why.

In a recent report to the Parliament, the Minister of State for Civil Aviation reported that a total of 81 foreign airlines (72 passenger and 9 cargo carriers), operate a combined schedule of 1,734 flights a week. Not surprisingly, Emirates, Air Arabia, Oman Air and Qatar Airways account for about 28% of these, and if you add others of the likes of Etihad, Gulf Air, Saudi Arabian and Kuwait Airways, then I suppose you could easily get to about 33% or one-third.

The preponderance of middle-east based carriers seems logical, and is driven by a few main reasons:

• There’s a large chunk of Indians living in the ME, and they account for a sizeable portion of seats sold on ME carriers operating to India. In fact, Air India and Jet Airways combined have far fewer services to the ME, though Indigo and SpiceJet have recently joined that bandwagon.
• There is an increasing trend of Indians traveling to the ME on holiday. Part of this is driven also by the gold supply in ME, and corresponding relaxations in gold import restrictions. I’m guessing that the availability of food that is acceptable to the Indian palate plays a large part in the ME holiday decision too!
• ME hubs, such as Abu Dhabi, Bahrain and Dubai, are well connected to most major cities in Asia and Europe, and corporates find it easier and far more cost-effective to have meetings, conferences and the like in the ME, which reduces travel costs. The oil prices in the ME also contributes to the lower fares, I suppose.
• Finally, the connectivity that ME based carriers such as Emirates and Etihad (post Jet) offer to destinations in the ME and beyond.

Back to the question of who’s in the Indian skies? The India-based carriers – Jet, Air India, SpiceJet, Indigo and GoAir (as well as a few smaller ones) aren’t far behind, though surprisingly, they seem to operate (or have permits for) 1,695 flights a week. That’s a shade lower than what the international carriers do, by still far higher than the 1,074 flights a week they flew in 2012. The interesting thing is that cargo airlines fly 729 flights a week – that’s over a fifth of ALL flights in India, counting both domestic and international operators.

So in total, that’s 3,429 flights a week, which works out to close to 500 a day. Not a bad day I guess!