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Ambar Singh Roy

Kolkata , Aug. 25

THE travel trade here is confident that Royal Brunei Airlines - which has apparently decided to stop flying into India from November 2004 - will resume operations to and from here sooner rather than later.

Although there has been no official statement from the airline in this regard, informed sources in the travel trade said they had been verbally told by the airline representatives that Royal Brunei would suspend operations to India from November. Airline officials, on condition of anonymity, confirmed the development.

At present, Royal Brunei operates twice-a-week flights on the Bandar Seri Bagawan- Dubai-Kolkata-Singapore sector. While the passenger load factor on the Kolkata-Singapore-Kolkata sector has been pretty much okay, that on the Dubai-Kolkata-Dubai leg was stated to be low.

The sources said that the rising fuel costs and other operational costs had forced the airline to take a macro view of the situation and decide on pulling out of low-yield sectors such as Dubai-Kolkata-Dubai.

Says Mr Sanjoy Seth, Eastern India Chairman of the Travel Agents Association of India: "You can push passengers from here to Dubai but there weren't too many passengers coming into Kolkata from there. Unless the loads from both destinations are balanced, it becomes difficult for airlines to achieve breakeven," he said, and added that most of the Dubai-bound traffic ex-India was from the South and the West.

Mr Seth expressed confidence that, after working out financial and operational matters internally, the airline would once again touch base in India. "Kolkata is the only destination Royal Brunei has been operating to in India. There is no reason why they should decide to go away permanently at a time when other foreign airlines are expressing their desire to fly into Kolkata," Mr Seth said.

Lately, Malaysian Airlines has expressed its intention to fly to Kolkata from the first week of January 2005. GMG Airlines, a local domestic private carrier in Bangladesh, has plans to launch flights between Kolkata and Chittagong, the sources said.

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