It is an accepted fact that the Gulf carriers like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways take a significant number of Indian international passengers to the US, Canada, and Europe.
Trouble seems to be brewing between the Indian government and the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Willie Walsh, Director General of the global airlines body IATA recently said that “The Gulf carriers, in particular, have done an exceptional job, serving the Indian market”.
Walsh’s words come after the then Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had said almost a year ago – on October 9, 2020 — that it was high time India sent out a loud and clear message that foreign airlines’ flights would not be allowed at the expense of Indian airlines.
Since then, however, India has got a new Civil Aviation Minister in Jyotiraditya Scindia and till date he has not said anything similar to the former minister. However, he pointed out on September 30, 2021 that the Indian government would put systems in place to boost long-haul international flights of Indian carriers to Europe and the US.
It is an accepted fact that the Gulf carriers like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways take a significant number of Indian international passengers to the US, Canada, and Europe. According to Walsh, Gulf carriers had done an “exceptional job” in serving the Indian market. Indian fliers have used the connectivity that the Middle-Eastern hubs provide which Indian air carriers typically wouldn’t have had.
Walsh also said in his talks with PTI that “if the view is that you need Indian carriers to serve that market, I don’t think you are going to get the same amount of choice (number of flights and number of cities connected), and certainly not in the short term”.
Serving India to North America directly is different to serving India over the Middle-Eastern hub into North America, Walsh had commented. “The number of options (number of flights or number of cities connected) you have is significantly greater when you are going through one of the Middle-Eastern hubs,” Walsh had said on the sidelines of the 77th annual general meeting of IATA, which took place in Boston.
Additionally, the Gulf carriers have been serving a very price-sensitive segment of the Indian market, Walsh said. “They have been serving India to North America with relatively low yields (yield is the average revenue earned from a passenger for each km travelled by him or her on the plane) and traffic, where direct services were difficult to be profitable. So, I think they play a very important role in providing connectivity to India,” he added.
“Serving India to North America directly is different to serving India over the Middle-Eastern hub into North America.”
— Willie Walsh, Director General IATA
“So, I look back to my own experience when I was at British Airways, we used to carry a lot of passengers from India over Heathrow into North America. The problem there is that the Heathrow airport (in London) is the most expensive hub airport in the world,” he said. That means that British Airways has been taking passengers with technically low yield — over an expensive and difficult hub of Heathrow airport — into the US, he said.
“That market is much better served by the likes of Qatar Airways and Emirates Airline. Now, it is Qatar Airways and Emirates, which have a very efficient hub with relatively low cost,” he said. “So, I think the Gulf hubs are fantastic in terms of their structure. The airlines — Emirates and Qatar — are really good. They know how to serve their market. And without a doubt, the Indian consumer would have clearly suffered, because they provided a lot of capacity into the market, and a lot of different cities have been served over the hub,” he added.
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