- Saturday, April 20, 2024
By: Shubham Ghosh
AIR FRANCE-KLM’s current Indian services are currently limited under air-bubble restrictions but the airline is hopeful that the Government of India will permit it to increase its flights to meet the rising demand, a senior executive of the carrier has said.
India has allowed limited special international flights with passenger restrictions under air bubbles formed with nearly 28 countries, including France and The Netherlands, since July last year.
Scheduled international flights have remained suspended in India since March 23, 2020.
Before Covid-19 pandemic, the airline operated 38 weekly flights from three Indian cities – Bangalore, Delhi and Mumbai – to Paris and Amsterdam, Jean-Noel Rault, general manager (Indian sub-continent), Air Force-KLM, told Press Trust to India in an interview.
Air France-KLM is currently operating 17 weekly flights from four Indian cities – Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai – to Paris and Amsterdam as per the air bubbles formed between India and France in July 2020 and India and The Netherlands in November 2020.
Rault, when asked if he sees the demand rising on India flights, said, “India has a very strong VFR (visiting friends and relatives) market. This in my opinion is one of the key factors to drive demand.
We have also seen the student segment develop favourably thanks to the convenient connections we offer and have received positive response to the Chennai–Paris direct operations launched in June by Air France,” he added.
The airline’s expectation was business and corporate travel will progressively grow in the second half of 2022, he noted.
However, the carrier’s scope was still limited in terms of frequency and destinations under the air-bubble restrictions, he added.
“We are hopeful with the progressive opening of borders we will be allowed to increase our frequency to meet the evolving demand,” he said.
Rault said Air France-KLM, under the current specific circumstances in India, has been operating services with the aim to cover the variable costs of each individual flight operation.
“In trends, the variation has been high in load factors in the past 12 months…On a positive note, for the first time since the pandemic we see load factors moving up for flights to India.” he added.
Air France-KLM believes that increase in flights’ frequencies should be considered with the progressive opening of international borders and growing demand, he said.
“We continue to interact with relevant authorities along with the French embassy and The Netherlands embassy in India. Together with our embassies, we continue to explore opportunities with the Indian authorities to expand the number of flights from India,” Rault said.
The Air France-KLM official said it could be prudent for India to consider moving towards “a normal world with progressive reopening of international commercial operations” as the country is doing well with the vaccination drive and the Covid-19 situation improving globally.
“This would be instrumental in facilitating travel to and from India, boost incoming tourism to India, which is much needed to help the economy and local operators who have been impacted severely due to the pandemic,” Rault said when asked if he thinks India should open scheduled international flights at the moment.
In September, Indian civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that the Indian government has to look to put in place certain systems to boost long-haul international flights of Indian airliners to destinations in Europe and South Asia.
Last month, Lufthansa group chief executive officer Carsten Spohr said that restricting air traffic between India and Germany is hurting both the economies and the airline group was eagerly waiting for New Delhi to allow more flights between the two nations.
