Edition 42
Early this week, Air India formally announced its third hub and first southern hub at Bengaluru. The deal involves having a lounge at Terminal 2 for domestic passengers and amongst other things an MRO which had already made news in the past.
This announcement is a big boost for Bengaluru – which has had its own set of challenges with runways and terminals and seen multiple ownership changes. Why and how Bengaluru exactly won against Hyderabad and Chennai may remain a mystery for long, but airline routes are all about numbers, capacity and competition and sometimes being a second mover may give more advantage than being the first one out.
When it comes to numbers, Bengaluru far triumphs both Hyderabad and Chennai by sheer size. The argument that Bengaluru still lacks international passengers will soon be old going by all the indications and calculations. This gets us to the next question on how will the sizable markets nearby respond? Will passengers from Chennai and Hyderabad fly to Bengaluru before taking a long haul flight or will they prefer the Singapore Airlines or Emirates of the world to take them to their destination? To a large extent it depends on the cost, but to a small extent it also depends on the frills like lounge, eateries, duty free options and how affordable they are? Human psychology plays tricks. What is ok to pay in SGD or USD at foreign airports is not OK to pay in INR at Indian airports because we suddenly feel it’s very expensive since we are in our own land. For the airport to command the price, the service and facilities have to go up exponentially.
In this whole equation, Bengaluru Airport has played its part in attracting Air India, the airline has played its part in announcing the hub. How soon the hub starts adding flights is for time to tell but when it does, what percentage of traffic will be connecting is something that needs to be tracked closely.
Lastly, for any hub to work, it needs a sizable traffic of its own and not just connecting traffic merely because the place lies on the air route and in this aspect the large population of Bengaluru, available capacity and the airport infrastructure definitely triumphs over both Hyderabad and government owned Chennai. The deal can always be made sweeter but one cannot overlook the numbers even if the sweetest dish is on the table!
You can now order Network Thoughts baggage tags and/or book marks!
Follow NetworkThoughts on Twitter, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.
For advertising opportunities, get in touch via the Contact us page
NetworkThoughts 