India’s national carrier Air India will soon be increasing their flight frequencies to Australia.
Air India on Tuesday announced it will increase its fleet utilisation and add frequencies to its existing routes to Melbourne and US.
The Indian government’s attempt to privatise the national carrier failed in 2018 when no one came forward to bid for it. The airline is now looking to make it attractive to private players before the Indian government looks to re-float its disinvestment plan.
The plan to increase the frequency of their service to Melbourne aims to utilise their fleet more.
“Our plan is to consolidate instead of expanding our network and curtail costs. We will be focussing on improving available seat miles [or passenger carrying capacity] by getting planes to fly more,” said Vinod Hejmadi, member-finance, Air India, at CAPA Summit 2019 in New Delhi.
Mr Hejmadi said once this is achieved, the airline will add frequencies to Melbourne.
“After the success of Indian cricket team, we would be increasing our frequencies to Melbourne. That is in the pipeline,” he said.
Currently, Air India operates direct flights from New Delhi to Sydney and Melbourne and the two countries recently signed an Open Sky pact which allows designated airlines to operate any number of flights and allocate any number of seats to six cities in each country.
Close up of an Indian tourist at Flinders Street Station in Melbourne, Australia. Source: Getty Images
Indians are the biggest source of migrants to Australia for the last two years according to figures from the Department of Home Affairs.
According to the 2016 Census, more than 455,389 people born in India live in Australia.
India is also among the top ten inbound travellers to Australia with Tourism Australia aiming to grow it to half a million tourists a year by 2025.
