The Dubai based Emirates Airlines is yet to finalise plans to bring the world’s largest commercial aircraft, the Airbus A-380 on its regular flights to Delhi, Essa Suleiman Ahmad, Vice-President, India and Nepal, Emirates Airlines, said on Wednesday.
“We are constrained by the air services bilaterals (exchanged between India and Dubai). Priority will be on changing what we operate to Delhi to make it a better product,” Essa said, adding that the airline is focusing more on ensuring that there was “consistency” in the product being offered to the passengers flying into and out of Delhi rather than bringing in the Airbus A-380.
Emirates already flies the A-380 to Mumbai.
The West Asia-Indian Ocean region, which includes India, contributed $2.3 billion — or 11 per cent of the airline’s total revenue — in 2013-14. The region includes Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh Maldives and Afghanistan, with India being the major market in the region.
Emirates operates 185 weekly flights to 10 destinations here, compared to about 115 weekly frequencies that it operates collectively to Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Trade potentialEssa claimed that Emirates has a large number of passengers flying annually from India from the non-metro cities rather than from the metros. The airline, which flew 4.86 million passengers in 2013-14, operates to Ahmedabad, Kochi, Kozhikode and Thiruvanthapuram, apart from the six metro cities.
The airline’s load factors on the India routes ranged from 91 per cent in Hyderabad to 90 per cent from Chennai, Kochi and Kozhikode to the lowest of 79 per cent from Kolkata. Delhi was at 87 per cent.
The airline is assessing several potential destinations in India, some of which are for trade purposes, Essa said.