VTORD wrote:atal17 wrote:At its height, in terms of frequencies, Pune handled a daily flight to Abu Dhabi and Singapore from Jet Airways, daily flight to Dubai from Spicejet and a 3 weekly flight to Dubai from Air India Express.
Currently only Spicejet is operating their Dubai flight. I’m hoping Vistara decides to take up the Pune-Singapore route (in conjunction with Singapore Airlines). There may even be hope for a Pune-Doha/Dubai from IndiGo (provided there are enough bilateral rights)
+1 on the Vistara. Wasn't aware of the AIX flight.
I would think QR has to have considered PNQ on a narrow body. G9, EY, FZ are all candidates for a PNQ flight IMHO.
For QR/FZ/EY/G9 to add Pune - The GoI must include Pune as a point of call in the bilaterals. Additionally, since Pune is an IAF field, I believe IAF must approve the individual foreign carriers as well.
RMTAviation wrote:Any predictions for new airlines into COK? My guesses are BA for LHR-COK (since the Air India Flight is doing very well), IST-COK (Turkish), FRA-COK (Lufthansa) BKK-COK (Thai). Also more domestic services from Air India & Spicejet.
Kochi is unlikely to see BA or TK - BA has a lot of premium-heavy aircraft, something that isn’t a good mix for Kochi-London. I think AI makes it work because they don’t have a lot of J seats to sell.
TK, OTOH, is constrained by bilateral rights - they’ve used up all frequencies available to them on the Turkish side. In an ideal world, they would’ve added places like Ahmedabad, Amritsar, Kochi, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai - but since they only get 2 daily frequencies - they are constrained to Delhi and Mumbai. The situation is unlikely to change though - relations between India and Turkey are quite frosty for geopolitical reasons.
If TG is able to work through their current issues, I can see them adding Kochi-Bangkok. Although, IIRC, Thai Smile used to fly the route with a TG codeshare before. Also, FD will resume Kochi-Bangkok Don Mueang soon.
I see Eurowings Discover adding Frankfurt-Kochi rather than Lufthansa itself - I feel that Eurowings Discover targets the right segment of passenger that is likely to fly between the two. IIRC, passengers on a EW Discover flight can travel onward to any other Lufthansa destination as well.
At this stage, I’m only seeing services being restored in the short-term. It’ll take some time for new airlines to come to COK.