Air India is aiming to have a 30 percent share of the domestic and international air traffic in the next five years, Campbell Wilson, Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director of the airline said on October 18. Air India wants to capture 30 percent market share. “Air India’s share of international air passengers is currently at twelve percent. The ambition is to have it at thirty percent,” Campbell said in a select media roundtable, for which Airinsight was invited. He added that there were several ways of achieving this market share. “One is entirely organically or a combination of organic and inorganic. Either way, 30 percent remains the ambition,” he added. At the moment, 80 percent of the international traffic to and from India is carried by foreign airlines. Asked by Airinsight to provide some details of the international city pairs that Air India plans to connect where it does not fly currently, the CEO said: “More generally, Air India's network has not always been purely commercially driven. It has been perhaps driven by the location of the diaspora, which is not wrong. But as the airline improves its product, service, reputation, and appeal, we can appeal to a lot more than those that have grown up with the Air India brand. We can appeal more to pure international travelers, the type who are flying Emirates in Qatar and Singapore and others. And that will allow us to broaden the footprint much more broadly than what is the case today.” When it was pointed out that the Indian diaspora is widely spread, Campbell added: “I think operating to where the diaspora is, is clearly one element of our consideration. Flying where there are business links and developing business links with India is a further consideration. And then to the extent that we can capture traffic flows that are completely independent of Air India being an Indian airline, just traveling between points A and B for which India is a convenient and logical intermediate point. That opens up plenty more opportunities because all that aggregation allows us to serve places where there might not actually be enough point-to-point traffic for India. But by aggregating traffic, we can mount service and provide a service to people who are traveling point to point (through) India,” he said. Campbell pointed out that if you look at any of the major sixth freedom carriers in the world historically like KLM, the Gulf carriers, and some of the Southeast Asian carriers, they fly to many more places than their own nationals are interested in traveling in great volumes. “But they do so because of this aggregation. This is India’s advantage, that it has got great geography from an air connectivity perspective. It has a great local population and diaspora. If you can combine the two, actually, you have got almost an unfair advantage over nearly everyone else. Because most others have either connectivity or home market, very few have diaspora,” Campbell said. Discussing cabin upgrades Air India is currently having discussions with suppliers about seats and inflight entertainment systems onboard the aircraft, Campbell said. “There is quite a bit of engineering work that needs to be done in order to do that because when you change the interior of an aircraft, you are changing weights, you are changing load, you are changing electrical, you are changing lights and all of the others passenger services. Once the engineering work is done (comes the) regulatory approval process. It is not a short process, but it is one that we are committed to. I will be able to announce more once we have got a few final decisions on the refurbishment of the aircraft.” When asked by Airinsight when Singapore Airlines might join Air India, Campbell responded: “Everything we are talking about is entirely Air India. I think to assume that there would be any involvement of another airline at this point is premature. I think Singapore Airlines’ own statement said that there is discussion and there is no decision. I wouldn't try and draw any connection. Suffice it to say that the ambition that Air India has is supported by the Air India board which has been shared with for Tata Sons board and the capital required to realize that vision at least with respect to the fleet has been provided or is being provided.” Campbell declined to put a figure on how much funds have been provided or are being provided. The airline said in September that it will be leasing five widebody Boeing 777-200LRs apart from the 25 Airbus A320neo family narrowbodies over the near term.
