The Hindu Business Line : To the US with panache

This week India’s two international carriers, Air India and Jet Airways will take a crack at the United States market, and how well they perform in this essay will have a decisive bearing on their profitability and survival. Both airlines are ready and dressed for the foray. In recent weeks and months they have primed themselves for the venture, Jet airways having bought out Air Sahara, and Air India having merged with the domestic carrier, Indian. The aircraft are b rand new and, like the bride headed for the wedding, their crew are also ready with new designer outfits. It is a pity that this well-prepared and determined foray is coming on just a decade too late.

Of course, the US route is not new. While Jet Airways has been plying the domestic skies competently for more than a decade, and only now has the approval from the two governments to fly on this route, the public sector carrier has been connected to the US for several decades and currently runs 24 flights a week. Yet, it is a shame that of the five million passengers who flew between the two countries last year, less than 15 per cent travelled on an Indian carrier, with European and West Asian airlines running away with the overwhelming majority of the business and the profits. It is not what was intended. Agreements that governed commercial flights between countries after the Second World War tended to help national airlines split the bilateral traffic equally. Even that was of little help as poor strategic management at Air India and in Government left the airline short of aircraft, shoddy of service, and allowed the market to slip out of its hands. When the airline last bought its Boeing 747s a decade and a half ago, it could have equipped them with extra fuel tanks to fly India-US non-stop. Had it done so then, it might have creamed off this lucrative market, and re-written its financial history.

Happily, the initiative seems to be back with the public sector carrier, the Government seems supportive, the fleet is on the throes of rejuvenation and equipped finally to launch non-stop flights to cities on the other side of the earth. Most crucially, the staff of the merged entity seems sufficiently roused to make the new avatar succeed as never before. For Jet Airways, hemmed in at home by cut-throat pricing and over-capacity, flights to the US represent the chance to break in to more rewarding space. With its hub in Brussels designed to clear passengers travelling to and from many points in the two countries, its route is different from Air India’s, though similar to those of the well-established European airlines. For now though, new aircraft and convenient schedules give India’s carriers finally the chance to get on level terms with the competition. Can they now score?

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