Originally Posted by
pabely
My comments to FlyGatwick.
1. LH - How many slots do you think are now available at LGW? None for a full day in Germany. Easyjet have tried all sorts of German cities, they do not make good money.
2. AI - How you been to Airports in India? They are nothing in comparison to ME3 carriers. Once India builds some new Airports, which they will do then they can look to some of those transit markets. I suspect if they get more slots at LHR, then they will transfer. The AI operation at LHR is well established and will always be the primary end game if slots become available. They are part of the Star Alliance so will want to be closer to UA, LH & TK at LHR.
I agree with you on LGW slot availability and UK-Germany flights (with the exception of certain LCY flights) being traditionally low-yield and largely unprofitable in their own right. Nonetheless, LH should have known that with the slots they managed to get at LGW for their FRA flights, this was unlikely to be successful.
As far as the state of Indian airports vis-à-vis their counterparts in the Gulf is concerned, it depends to which airport you specifically refer. The standards vary widely. The one I have experienced at Bengaluru (Kempegowda Airport) - especially the new Terminal 2 - is world-class. In fact, in some aspects it's arguably ahead of DXB and not very far behind Singapore Changi. And then there is the brand-new airport at Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), which is set to open its doors later this year or early next. It'll be a two-runway airport from the start, and therefore will lend itself as a hub (unlike the current BOM airport, which like LGW is operated as a single-runway airport).
Air India's future at LGW will depend not only on LHR slot availability, but what their ultimate strategy pending a successful turnaround of the airline will be, i.e., whether they'll adopt the MEB3 global super connector business model. If that's the case, even though their main focus will always be on LHR, It'll actually make sense to link their Indian hubs to multiple London area airports, just like EK and QR do. The fact that AI are part of the Star Alliance should IMO not be an obstacle here. Further in this context, I actually disagree with you that being closer to its Star Alliance partners at LHR is an end for AI in itself, without taking into consideration whether the connections these partners can offer at LHR are actually sensible. If AI wants to enable its passengers to connect seamless to and from destinations in Germany to which it doesn't fly with its own metal, it will surely be far more efficient to do this via the LH hubs in FRA and MUC as connecting to / from Germany at LHR involves significant backtracking. And as far as facilitating TATL connections at LHR via AI's Star partners UA and AC is concerned, although these don't involve backtracking unlike in the case of Germany, encouraging AI passengers to transfer at LHR to / from UA and AC actually results in a revenue loss for AI's non-stop India-US and India-Canada flights, undermining the profitability of these ultra long-haul services - reportedly, AI's most profitable routes. This is therefore not in AI's interest (with the same applying to AI passengers changing at FRA or MUC onto LH / UA / AC TATL flights). Lastly, there is also the geopolitical factor impeding closer collaboration between AI and TK (apart from transferring between AI and TK flights at LHR involving even more backtracking than transferring between AI and LH flights at LHR, and TK's fast-growing IST hub being viewed with the same suspicion as EK's and QR's respective hubs at DXB and DOH by AI's top managenent). Turkey has traditionally been viewed in India as a friend of Pakistan, India's long-standing rival and foe. This is a widely held view amogst Indians, even at board level, and let's not forget in this context that AI's ultimate owners, the Tatas, are after all born and have lived in India for all of their lives despite their carefully crafted, highly polished cosmopolitan appearance. As well in this context, we need to remember that the current AI CEO, New Zealand national, ex-Scoot CEO Campbell Wilson, only got this role after his short-lived predecessor, a former TK CEO who is a Turkish national (and whose name I can't remember now) resigned in the face of strong public opposition in India to what was widely viewed as the appointment of a national of an unfriendly country, who had also gone on record previously as supporting his country's endorsement of the official Pakistani position on Kashmir, to the top job of a company many Indians regard as one of the jewels in their industrial crown.