Air India’s rise could impact three Gulf hubs, says Saudia official

Currently, many Indian passengers use Doha, Dubai and Abu Dhabi as transit points to travel to other countries

NT Bureau
Doha

Air India’s rise could be at the expense of three “super-connector” hubs — Doha, and Dubai and Abu Dhabi — as Indian passengers would prefer direct flights of their national airline, an official of Saudia Airlines has said, according to India’s Business Standard.

A significant portion — over 70 per cent — of passengers flying on Emirates, Etihad and Qatar Airways flights connected to India utilized the airlines’ hubs in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha as transit points for travel between India and third countries in February this year, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium’s data reviewed by India’s daily Business Standard.

In an interview to the newspaper on the sidelines of CAPA India Aviation Summit 2024, Arved von zur Muehlen, chief commercial officer of Saudia Airlines, said Saudia should not be classified along with the aforementioned carriers as more than 90 per cent of its traffic to and from India is “point-to-point”.
“Only about 6-7 per cent of our passenger traffic to and from India uses Jeddah and Riyadh to transit. We have a very strong local demand…We don’t see ourselves as a Gulf airline, we see ourselves as a Saudi Arabian airline,” he said.

The Jeddah-based airline currently operates more than 100 weekly flights to six cities in India.
“India is among the top five international markets for us,” he mentioned.

Muehlen said: “If they (Air India) get it right, it would be more at the expense of the super-connectors because why should Indians fly via any hub when they have a direct offering from their national airline?”
“All this hub traffic is there because of the weak traffic of the national airline (AI),” he pointed out.

AI has stridently been opposing any increase in bilateral rights to these three “super-connector” hubs.
Its CEO and MD had on Wednesday said that if the Indian government decides to increase bilateral rights to these three hubs, it would be as good as pulling the rug from under AI’s feet as it has ordered 470 planes for expansion.

On IndiGo’s decision to order widebody planes and introduce business class on its flights, Muehlen said it is interesting that the airline is now going from its low-cost model to a more hybrid model.
He said Saudia does not want additional bilateral rights from India as it has not completely used the previously allocated quota.