Air India aims to double transit international traffic

New Delhi: In a bid to further strengthen its global footprint and aid India's aviation hub ambitions, the Tata Group-backed Air India expects to double the share of international passengers transiting through Indian airports on Air India flights to other destinations beyond India, a senior executive said.

"Currently, the share of international passengers transiting via India on Air India flights has grown to an average of around 4% of our total international passenger traffic from nearly 0.5% earlier. We expect this to grow even further to nearly 10% over a period of 5-10 years," the executive said, while speaking on the sidelines of the CAPA India Aviation Summit.

Air India is the largest full-service carrier on the overseas market to and from India. The airline has an independent market share of around 13% on the international market to and from India with more than 8.1 million passengers for 2023, as per the data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

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"For airports such as Delhi, the share of international transit traffic for Air India is as high as 10% and this has the potential to grow up to 20% over the time period of 5-10 years," the executive added.

Strong Ambitions

While the total international traffic to and from India in 2023 at 63.9 million passengers has not crossed the pre-covid level of 64.1 million passengers in 2019, it has shown a 36% growth since 2022 when passenger traffic was 47.1 million. As a result, the international ambitions of Indian carriers have been strong since 2023. In fact, India's largest airline IndiGo has also placed an order for 30 wide-body aircraft to tap the long-haul international markets.

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"Air India will be leveraging the partnerships with Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa to deepen our reach, get access to their international markets beyond their hubs and give access to our international markets beyond Indian metros," he said.

"We see strong demand for markets such as Colombo, Kathmandu, and Dhaka. In fact, the demand is enough for even wide-body aircraft. We want to build the strength of our international network first in South Asia, then South East Asia, then to Far East with a target of three hours as minimum connecting time," he added.

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Air India, formerly a state-run airline for 69 years, was reacquired by the Tata Group under a government-led strategic disinvestment programme in January 2022. Later that year, the Tata group announced a merger between Air India and Vistara. Vistara is currently a 51:49 joint venture of Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines and commenced operations in 2015. After the merger, Singapore Airlines will hold a 25.1% stake in the merged entity.

Expansion Plans

As part of the long-term plan, the airline also placed an order for 470 aircraft, including 70 wide-body aircraft, in February 2023. With the deliveries of the wide-body aircraft, which have commenced with Airbus A350s, the airline has plans to provide long-haul non-stop connectivity to metro cities in India with potential hubs at Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru.

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"Today unfortunately or fortunately the way Indian airports were privatised, we have ended up with a very heavy revenue share for airports such as Delhi, Mumbai. So, they often are not left with the resources to invest. This will need some out of the box solutions or incentives to invest," Nipun Aggarwal, chief commercial & transformation officer, Air India, said at a panel discussion.

He further added that in order to make Delhi, Mumbai airports similar to airports in Dubai, Doha or Singapore, solutions will be required to transform the complete transit experience for passengers across areas of immigration, baggage, check-in among others.