The Hindu Business Line : Growing synergy between India, China

CATHAY Pacific Airways sees the growing trade and official relationships between India and China as providing a major push for airline traffic for it.

Consequently, without changing the marketing of Cathay Pacific in India, the Hong Kong-headquartered airline will lay greater emphasis on China as being its home market, according to Mr Rupert Bray, Country Manager - India, Nepal and Bangladesh, Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd.

He told Business Line here that China was a major leisure destination with tour groups and leisure groups combining the best of Hong Kong with the best of mainland China.

Judging by the way tourists to China from other countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand had picked up, he expected to see a big increase in tourist traffic from India to China.

Cathay Pacific hopes to increase its services to India. At present, it operates four flights a week each to Delhi and Mumbai, and hopes to increase these to daily services. Besides, the airline is hoping that it will be able to fly to other metros such as Chennai, Bangalore and Kolkata. Discussions on bi-lateral air services agreement between India and Hong Kong are on, according to Mr Bray.

He said that Cathay Pacific operated flights to Beijing and Shanghai, while its sister airline, Dragon Air, covered all the major and secondary cities in China.

Mr Bray identified four major passenger segments as growth areas. One was the corporate traveller - from software companies such as Wipro, Infosys, Oracle, TCS and business process outsourcing companies. This was premium traffic and an important segment of the airline's market, and a growing one too.

The next was the segment that was partly driven by the IT industry - those visiting friends and relatives abroad. The third segment was the traditional Cathay market, which was the leisure travellers flying to Bangkok and Hong Kong.

However, even here, there was an increasing number of travellers flying to other destinations, including those in Australia and in China. The last segment was the small businessmen and traders, who were travelling to China on work.

Apart from operating more direct flights between India and Hong Kong, Cathay Pacific planned to increase its freighter services into the country. At present, it operated a total of three freighters a week to Delhi and Mumbai with connections to London and Paris. The cargo traffic was increasing, particularly of components and other time-critical shipments, Mr Bray said.