American Airlines Inaugurated in One of the Biggest Untapped Markets- India
American Airlines finally relaunched their US to India flights this previous week, after about a decade of stopping its services in India. They are looking to capitalize on the growing demand for non-stop travel amid the coronavirus pandemic, as told to Reuters by a senior executive of the airline.
American Airlines wants to expand its international networking wings as travel demand is bouncing back at home and India was “one of the biggest untapped markets” for it, as said by Tom Lattig, managing director of EMEA sales.
As said by Lattig in an interview in New Delhi, “A lot of customers really want to fly non-stop, particularly as we’ve come through the pandemic. We know there is a huge demand for travel between India and the United States so there is an opportunity right now in the middle of the pandemic to come back.”
American Airlines had suspended its services in India in 2012, citing reasons for high oil prices and finances. It has relaunched the US to Delhi flights from New York’s John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) to New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport (DEL) on Friday, 12th November 2021.
American Airlines has long since announced its intentions to launch non-stop direct flights between India’s tech hub Bengaluru and Seattle in March as it is one of the vastly untapped routes for business travelers.
Lattig also said, if it succeeds with those two routes, it will add services to India’s financial capital of Mumbai. The expansion would also depend on the availability of aircraft as it awaits deliveries of wide-body aircraft from Boeing.
According to Lattig, there are more opportunities than we actually have aircraft for. The U.S. carrier is already flying 90% of its pre-pandemic capacity at home and has even deployed widebody planes on some routes. Demand from Europe and Britain was also strong, especially after the United States opened its borders last week, and demand from Mexico and parts of Latin America had exceeded 2019 levels.
But the airline had yet to see any meaningful recovery in Asia, where it is flying less than 25% of pre-pandemic capacity and added that the slow rate of vaccinations in the region was partly to blame.
Another fact to note is that most of the current global demand is from those travelers who are visiting family and loved ones or for leisure. It would be only after the end of 2023 that the level of corporate travel eventually recovers back to levels of 2019, and Asia would be the slowest region to recover back up, as expected by Lattig.
As American Airlines looks to establish a presence in India, it was banking on its service and a four-class cabin to better compete with rivals like Air India, which was acquired by India’s Tata Group, and United Airlines – both offering direct flights to the United States, Lattig said in the interview.
American Airlines will also leverage its partnership with U.S. low-cost carrier JetBlue and codeshare with India’s biggest airline, budget carrier IndiGo so that it can feed its network by connecting travelers from multiple cities together.
“We’re going to be the newcomer and we are going to be aggressive about establishing a place for ourselves,” Lattig said.
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