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Egypt Air eyes pie of India transit traffic with direct flights
Summary
- In a bid to tap the fastest growing aviation market in the world, the airline has launched a direct flight between Delhi and Cairo
In a bid to tap the fastest growing aviation market in the world, Egypt Air has launched a direct flight between Delhi and Cairo, with an eye on the transit air traffic from national capital to Europe, North America, and Africa.
“India is a promising market. This will result in good connectivity to other destinations such as mid-Africa and West Africa," chairman and chief executive officer Capt. Mohamed Moussa told Mint.
“Next step will be codeshare with Indian companies," Moussa said, adding that the airline is getting ready to initiate discussions for a codeshare as part of the strategy going forward.
The airline will operate the direct flight between New Delhi and Cairo four times a week in an Airbus A320neo with a two-cabin service. With the new route, the airline is the sole carrier that provides direct connectivity to Cairo from Mumbai and New Delhi.
Notably, various smaller airlines in the region are eyeing the Indian market after the Indian government restricted any more new foreign flights by large carriers like Emirates, Qatar and even Singapore Airlines. These carriers carry a lot of traffic from India to lucrative markets like the US, Europe through their home country.
As per data for the March quarter from the civil aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the airline carried 21,809 passengers between Mumbai and Cairo. Under the current bilateral agreement, the country has the scope to operate 14 weekly flights. The airline has now achieved 11 weekly flights with seven flights a week from Mumbai and four flights a week from New Delhi.
The airline said it is looking at destinations in the south of India to enhance connectivity and may also increase frequency from New Delhi around the summer season next year.
“After recovery from covid, many people are now keen and have huge need to travel. As Egypt Air has a very good connectivity network with hub in Cairo, we see here in India a very big potential to catch traffic from India to Cairo and beyond Cairo to our network destinations in Africa, North America and Europe," country manager Amr Ali told Mint.
The airline analysed traffic departing from India ahead of launching the new route and discovered that a lot of traffic is flying to Cairo as a transit hub. Traditionally, transit traffic from India has also been main source of demand for airlines such as Emirates, Etihad, and Qatar, among others. In fact, the Indian civil aviation ministry has also formulated a plan with the stakeholders to build international hubs in India.
“For me, Air India is my brother. I cannot say we are competitors but we should co-operate, we should co-ordinate together but of course any airline that operates for the same destination, it will be competitive," Ali said, when asked about the competition with fellow Star Alliance member Air India.
While the 6.5-hour route is also doable for an airline like IndiGo in India, Egypt Air said its hospitality and food service will make it a preferred service.
“IndiGo has different routes. Also, in-flight services is one other factor, we have very good catering, hospitality and we have very well-trained cabin crew. We are keen about Indian food, we have special meals catered to Indians. We are a full-service carrier, not low-cost," Ali said.
The airline executive further stated that while air fares had soared due to the resurgence in demand after relaxations of covid-related restrictions, they will stabilise but will remain flexible as the industry is very sensitive to external factors.
