It seems that Africa is the latest destination of choice for Indian carriers. IndiGo – which announced a massive international expansion early this month, has started opening for sale flights which were announced. The first of the lot sees flights to Nairobi being opened for sale. IndiGo will connect Nairobi from Mumbai and will be its first destination in Africa and 27th international destination
The airline will operate the six hour plus flight with the A320neo, with timings as below
6E1853 BOM0210 – 0540NBO
6E1854 NBO0640 – 1525BOM
The route will be a duopoly with Kenya Airlines, which operates double daily flights to Mumbai. IndiGo had announced its intention to start services to Nairobi earlier this year and followed it up with the announcement of the flight on June 02, 2023. Nairobi will be connected from Mumbai, starting August 05, 2023 but with a different schedule for the inaugural.
While India had non-stop connections to Tanzania, Rwanda, Kenya, Reunion island, Seychelles, Mauritius and Ethiopia, Indian carriers were missing from the scene completely until Air India started flights to Nairobi from Ahmedabad as part of Vande Bharat Mission during COVID. The flight continued even as international services resumed with the flight originating at Delhi and making its way to Nairobi via Ahmedabad. The thrice weekly service has since moved to a non-stop from Delhi starting the summer schedule. Vistara, another airline from the Tata group of airlines, flies to Mauritius from Mumbai.
Competition
Kenya Airways operates double daily flights to Mumbai and deploys the B737-800 aircraft on the route. The aircraft is configured with 16 Business and 129 economy class seats. Kenya Airways is a historic operator on the route
There aren’t many airlines in Kenya, with which IndiGo could cooperate in the form of interline or codeshare. It will be interesting to see if it starts collaboration with Kenya Airways – which is a Skyteam member. IndiGo has not been averse to interlines and codeshares with its flights to Doha and Istanbul operating in collaboration with Qatar Airways and Turkish Airlines respectively. Such a collaboration with Kenya Airways could put pressure on Vistara – which is yet to launch flight operations to Nairobi, but its flights had shown up in the departures list at Mumbai in January.
The challenge for IndiGo would be the baggage policy. The A321s to Istanbul had faced severe challenges pre-COVID with complaints of luggage being left behind. The weather profile for flights to Nairobi is different but Kenya Airways offers a 2 piece baggage policy with 23 kgs each as compared to 15kgs, one piece policy of IndiGo. Will the cost differential be enough to attract the traffic?
Partnership with Kenya Airlines would open up at least 10 destinations beyond Nairobi for IndiGo, where there is sizable Indian origin population and/or has current connectivity with India. Kenya Airlines has investments from Air France – KLM, already a partner of IndiGo.
The numbers
For the first quarter of 2023, 81,32,383 passengers flew out of India on international flights. 44% of these were carried by Indian carriers with the rest flying foreign carriers. Kenya Airways catered to just 0.4% of that traffic. Traffic between India and Kenya flows via Addis Ababa, Dubai and Doha, in addition to the non-stop links from Mumbai and Delhi.
The trade ties between these countries and India have only grown strong in the last few years. This is apart from a large community with roots in India and traders between the two countries. Exports to Kenya are less than 1% of total exports for India, while imports are less than 0.1%, which is also evident from the cargo carried by Kenya Airways.
Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport (IATA: NBO) is the largest airport in Kenya and serves the capital city. A single runway which is 4,200 mtr long handles traffic which is served by two terminals. Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport is the second largest airport in India and serves the commercial capital. IndiGo has a hub at Mumbai and connects Mumbai to over 50 domestic destinations, along with a handful of international destinations.
Network Thoughts
IndiGo’s foray into Africa comes on expected lines after the airline has repeatedly talked about increasing its international presence. The network multiplier effect will help the airline feed traffic via Mumbai.
The timings help connect domestic passengers to Nairobi via Mumbai, even with terminal transfer time taken into account. However, the return timings may not be very favourable. Typically, an airline always faces challenges with timings on one leg, if it operates only one frequency on a route.
Will it look at retiming in future? IndiGo completely twisted its Vietnam timings in the past and recently Vistara changed its timings to Mauritius. As more international flights start and the international connectivity starts building, one would expect a change or an addition to Nairobi.
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