In a not so surprising announcement, Virgin Atlantic – a member of Skyteam alliance, announced flights to Bengaluru. The airline operates daily flights to Delhi and Mumbai from London Heathrow and will add Bengaluru as its third destination in India. The flights will be available for sale starting June 14, 2023; and operational from March 31, 2024. This will be a year round service and operated by three class B787-9 dreamliner with 31 Upper class, 35 Premium and 192 economy class seats. The flight will operate at below timings
VS316 LHR1145 – 0215(+1)BLR
VS317 BLR0405 – 1015LHR
It now seems that Bengaluru is becoming the de facto number three for airlines wanting to expand in India. In the recent past, we have seen KLM start operations to Bengaluru after the demise of Jet Airways, Qantas opting for Bengaluru over Mumbai, Emirates deploying their A380 to Bengaluru and Lufthansa announcing flights from Munich. From a handful of international flights 15 years ago to becoming the southern gateway – Bengaluru has come a long way, driven by a growing city population and economy. Often referred to as the Silicon Valley of India, the city has made its mark as a startup capital of the country.
Virgin’s announcement
The airline, now part of Skyteam, announced the much anticipated flights to Bengaluru where it will compete with British Airways.
The airline operates double daily service to Delhi and a daily service to Mumbai. The airline had announced flights to Manchester from Delhi in February 2020. The service was to begin in October the same year, but little did anyone know of what lay ahead in 2020! The service never took off.
Bengaluru – the strong number three
Bengaluru airport has been successful in attracting new airlines and starting new destinations in recent years. On the domestic side, Bengaluru is connected to more destinations than Mumbai and next only to Delhi. IndiGo, for example, connects Bengaluru to more domestic destinations than it does from Delhi — its largest hub. But on international routes, Bengaluru still lagged behind Chennai and Kochi to be at number six in footfalls in January. Both Kochi and Chennai have a higher count of shorter routes primarily due to a mix of blue collar traffic and VFR (Visiting Friends and Family).
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Kochi, and Hyderabad were the top domestic routes for Bengaluru in 2022, contributing approximately 40 per cent to domestic traffic. Whereas Dubai, Male, Singapore, Doha, and Abu Dhabi were the top international routes contributing approximately 47 per cent to international traffic.
The pandemic, issues with Dreamliner delivery and then the Russia – Ukraine war has meant that the much-talked-about flights between Bengaluru and Seattle by American Airlines never took off and so was the case to San Francisco from Bengaluru by United. But Air India jumped in and started the Bengaluru – SFO route during the pandemic and now has a thrice weekly operation.
Traditionally, airlines have preferred Delhi, followed by Mumbai, and then diversified to either Chennai or Bengaluru. In this case, Qantas seems to have looked at Bengaluru for the market size and catchment area it provides. Coupled with a codeshare with IndiGo, Bengaluru provides a larger pan-India connectivity than Mumbai. The same reason also works well for Virgin Atlantic, since it too has a codeshare with IndiGo.
Infrastructure availability has been the prime reason for Bengaluru taking shape as the gateway to Southern India instead of Chennai, yet Chennai handles more international passengers than Bengaluru.
Key Numbers
In Q4 of CY22, there were 6.38 lakh passengers who flew non-stop between India and the UK (two-way traffic). The market is much bigger with DGCA not recording the end destination for passengers boarding flights via one of the hub carriers.
British Airways and Virgin Atlantic took over 50% of that traffic on the back of higher capacity as compared to a fragmented schedule of Air India. The traffic is largely driven from Delhi, followed by Mumbai and Bengaluru. Air India managed to get a good grip in the traffic from other cities like Amritsar, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Goa.
Network thoughts
Since the time Virgin Atlantic decided to pull out of Pakistan, there has been speculation that the airline will use spare slots and aircraft for flights to Bengaluru. This will further put pressure on Air India and Vistara – the only Indian carriers which ply between India and the UK.
NetworkThoughts 