The Hindu Business Line : New Bangalore airport to add HK, US destinations

Come May, the greenfield airport at Devanahalli will be adding some new direct international destinations and airlines to Bangalore and bringing the Asia-Pacific and the US West coast closer.

At least five new international carriers are waiting to fly in or out of the all-new Bangalore airport when it starts commercial operations on May 11. Among them, the Cathay Pacific-owned Dragonair will be making its India debut and linking up Hong Kong. Whereas Kingfisher Airlines has been hoping for a historic direct San Francisco touchdown, probably in August, to link the two software hubs halfway across the globe.

“We are confident that South India’s connections to the Far East, Europe and North America will improve substantially in the near future. Bangalore, with its strong business market, ideal location and the potential of a regional hub will now attract more domestic and international airlines,” airport operator BIAL said in reply to queries from Business Line. Dragonair has begun announcing its daily A330-300 arrivals starting May 25.

Two cargo carriers, Quickjet and the Singapore-based Jett8, too, have sounded out their intentions on Bengaluru International Airport.

Additional capacity

The other new airlines landing in the city are Air Mauritius; the low-cost Tiger Airways (part-owned by Singapore Airlines) and Oman Air with six flights a week. “The additional capacity at the new airport will enable these airlines to operate flights from the city,” BIAL said.

These will be operating in addition to the other European and Asian airlines that are already flying to Bangalore — Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, Gulf Air, Air Arabia, Sri Lankan Airlines and cargo carriers such as Etihad, Transmile and Qatar Airways.

In addition, those that are already touching down at the HAL airport, such as Emirates, Thai Airways, Singapore Airlines and Malaysian Airways, have all sought increased weekly frequencies from Devanahalli.

The Singapore-based Tiger also has five other destinations in the country and is linked to South-East Asia, China and Australia.

With this, the airline frequency at the new location will increase to 1,595 flights a week or a traffic growth of 30 per cent over HAL airport. Fifteen per cent of the total flights are international, BIAL said.

Domestic airlines have requested for an average of 20-25 per cent increase in slots for this summer. Nearly 29 per cent of domestic flights have been given better flight timings in the new schedule.