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Taking off: Mr Tom Wright, (left) General Manager (India, Middle East, Africa and Pakistan), Cathay Pacific Airways Ltd, and Mr Rakesh Raicar, Marketing and Sales Manager (India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Bhutan), at a press conference in Chennai on Tuesday.

Our Bureau

Chennai, June 3 Cathay Pacific, the Hong Kong-based airline, today launched its operations between Hong Kong and Chennai. The inaugural flight arrived around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, carrying 308 passengers, against the aircraft’s capacity of 311 passengers. An hour later, it departed to Hong Kong, carrying 286 passengers, the airline’s General Manager-India, Middle East and Africa, Mr Tom Wright, told a press conference here today.

Cathay will run four flights a week out of Chennai. From July 1, its sister-airline, DragonAir will operate daily flights to Hong Kong from Bangalore.

The introduction of this carrier is significant in two major ways. First, it offers South Indian passengers one more choice to travel to the US. Cathay’s flight from Chennai will take you to San Fransisco or Los Angeles in 21 hours, including a 3-hour stopover in Hong Kong, which is the least time taken by any airline between Chennai and the US West Coast. Competitive airlines such as Singapore and Thai take about 3-4 hours more.

The introduction of the Cathay flight brings in its wake competitive pressures against a fare hike. Cathay’s least fare (when you book well in advance) is around Rs 39,000 (excluding taxes of around Rs 15,000) for a round trip to the US. This is slightly higher than, for example, Singapore Airlines, which charges Rs 36,000 (plus taxes), but the airline would take longer than Cathay to reach the US.

Those who take the Cathay flight to the US fly out of Chennai at around 2.45 a.m. and reach San Fransisco or Los Angeles by noon. Oberoi are the caterers for this flight.

Secondly, the Airbus 330-300 aircraft that Cathay has put on the Chennai-HK segment enhances cargo capacity by about 20 per cent. At present, Cathay operates four freighters that fly the HK-Mumbai-Chennai-HK route. Out of Chennai, Cathay offers 240 tonnes of weekly cargo capacity. Now there will between 40 and 50 tonnes of capacity more, depending upon the number of passengers.

Sources in the airline industry see this as a positive move. One industry expert, who is with a competitive airline, said that this would open up areas such as Guangzhou and Shenzhen in China. The Chinese and the Japanese are great travellers and the new link to India will bring in more load for airlines in the domestic segment.

Mr Bharat Mahadevan, Manager-South India, Singapore Airlines, told Business Line that the market was growing and hence, even with one more airline in the South India-Far East-US routes, there will be enough loads for all airlines.

However, he noted that there could be some short-term blips as capacity to Far East grew about 70 per cent last year (or around 5,600 seats more), when the traffic grew only around 30 per cent.

Mr Wright said that Hong Kong itself was becoming a favoured tourist destination. (Cathay’s fares start from Rs 21,000 for a round trip to Hong Kong.)

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Cathay Pacific lands in Chennai, takes least time to the US

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