The Hindu Business Line : BA to operate flights to India only from Heathrow

BRITISH Airways (BA), which is to offer more than 4,000 additional seats a month between Mumbai and Delhi and London from March next year, has no immediate plans of operating flights to India from any other airport except for Heathrow in London, a senior airline official has said.

"We never say never in our business. But for the moment BA will operate to India only from Heathrow airport," the airlines Commercial Director, Mr Martin George, told Business Line.

At present the airline is working to further cement the 75-year-long relationship it has with India. Taking advantage of the recently concluded liberal bilateral air services agreement, BA has decided to press into service a 224-seater Boeing 777 on the second daily flight that it will operate to Mumbai from October this year.

The airline will operate a Boeing 747 aircraft capable of seating 351 passengers in a four-class configuration when it starts the second daily flight to Delhi from March next year. The start of a double daily flight to the two Indian metro cities will see the airline offering 4,025 additional seats a month between India and London.

The air services agreement reached between India and the UK earlier this year is to see the number of direct non-stop flights between London and Mumbai and Delhi touch 56 flights a week from winter next year.

"The priority of BA over the next 12 months is to establish the extra flights that we have been allotted and to successfully launch the flight to Bangalore. We have a long-term commitment to the Indian market," Mr George said, when asked whether the airline would look at operating to more cities in India just yet.

The air services agreement allows the designated airlines from the UK to operate to all other routes in India except Heathrow and Delhi and Mumbai and Bangalore and Chennai.

While accepting that the start of more flights between India and the UK will put some pressure on fares, the BA official said that yields had not been "badly hit."

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