Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, under competitive pressure from mainland Chinese carriers and faced with bilateral constraints, plans to deploy bigger aircraft on its Delhi and Mumbai routes, while retaining the option of increasing the footprint of its sister carrier Cathay Dragon.
Cathay currently operates flights to Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Bengaluru but bilateral constraints allow it to operate only 48 weekly flights to India and, in order to boost capacity, it plans to replace Airbus A330 planes with bigger aircraft like the Boeing 777.
The just-inducted Airbus A350-1000 or the A350-900 (already in operation) — both new generation, fuel-efficient aircraft — will not fly to India given the short flight to Hong Kong.
‘Eyeing tier-2 cities’
The airline’s general manager of corporate affairs, Kinto Chan, said the Hong Kong-India route was ‘big’ on Cathay’s future plans and in time, it would look at flying to tier-two cities.
Cathay, which just completed a decade of flying to Chennai, said its flights from India cater to a mix of corporate travellers, tourists, those Visiting Relatives and Friends (VFR) and students.
On the cargo front, Cathay carries about 30 tonnes in the belly of every flight, with electronics constituting a chunk.
“India is a great market but it is a slightly unbalanced market in that the yields you get on inbound cargo into India tend to be higher than outbound,” an official said.
(The writer was in Toulouse, France at the invitation of Cathay Pacific)