Air India is “passionately building” up India’s international direct flight network as well as scaling up its service standards to meet the growing aspirations of the country, Air India’s Chief Executive Campbell Wilson told businessline.
“We have seen the value that aviation brings by connecting people, by connecting economies,” he told businessline in an interaction at Air India’s headquarters located in Gurugram.
Accordingly, Wilson feels India’s interest is in domiciling as much of the aviation system in India as possible, because “every flight that Air India operates from India employs Indian crew, Indian engineers, Indian pilots, Indian ground handling staff, supports Indian tourism, makes connectivity for Indian business and attracts overseas supplies to support and manufacture in India.”
Developing larger aviation ecosystem
“We are really passionate about building India,” he said.
According to Wilson, Air India is working on developing many parts of the larger aviation ecosystem, including building relevant aviation skills at a massive aviation training academy in Gurugram that trains close to 2,000 aviation professionals every day.
Besides, the airline is setting up South Asia’s largest flying school with 34 training aircraft and a new aircraft maintenance training institute in Bengaluru to create a talent pipeline for a new 12-bay MRO facility being built by Air India.
Furthermore, the opportunity for Indian aviation, he said, is enormous today.
“It is already the third largest domestic aviation market and the first largest international aviation market globally, growing at nearly 8-10 per cent compound growth and expected to continue doing so for the next 10-15 years,” Wilson said.
A huge opportunity for growth
He cited the propensity of Indians to travel by air, however, the overall numbers are currently at one-fifth of China, signalling a huge opportunity for growth.
“If you factor in India’s diaspora, India’s increasing presence in the global supply chain, and overseas expansion of Indian business, the opportunity is immense,” he said.
“That is why you see the IATA AGM here in Delhi after 42 years. To capture this enormous opportunity, we have ordered 570 aircraft, including 80 wide-body aircraft. We are working with the airport operators in Delhi, Mumbai, and Bengaluru to increase and improve their infrastructure for both operations and customer service.”
In addition, Air India is increasingly scheduling its flights in a way that more people can connect from Europe to Southeast Asia or Australasia via India.
“We are bringing in more people through India, and not just to and from India,” he said.
Since privatisation of Air India in 2022, it has increased international-to-international connectivity by four times.
This has been made possible, Wilson, due to the optimisation of flight timings between Europe and South Asia or Australia and vice versa within a span of 2.5-3.5 hours, Wilson said.
Moreover, he pointed out that Air India has increased its international network by 25 per cent over the last three years, but it is still far below the non-stop reach of even much smaller countries.
However, further expansion of the airline’s global network, he said, is a factor of aircraft addition.
“Our teams are constantly engaging with stakeholders on all these counts. New aircraft deliveries from 2027 will power the growth of Air India,” he said.