By Singh, Published on September 15th, 2023 in Blog, News
With over 42x weekly services on 6 routes to India from Frankfurt & Munich, Lufthansa over the past years has impressively strengthened its presence in India’s major markets of Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai.
The airline will now be further expanding it’s India network to Hyderabad as well in the upcoming months with 5x weekly non-stop services from Frankfurt, along with launching services to Bengaluru from it’s Munich hub as well.
A quick analysis of Lufthansa’s present India network reveals that the airline continues to enjoy exclusivity on 5 of its 6 routes to India. These include:
- Munich-Delhi
- Frankfurt-Mumbai
- Munich-Mumbai
- Frankfurt-Bengaluru
- Frankfurt-Chennai
At present, the airline operates 35x weekly services on the above routes, deploying approximately 90,480 seats per month. The only route where the airline at present faces the competition is Frankfurt-Delhi.
Notably, the Frankfurt-Hyderabad and Munich-Bengaluru routes will also be completely exclusive for Lufthansa.
While the airline is able to serve a large point-to-point demand on these routes, Lufthansa benefits from great feeder traffic for its North American network as well from these markets.
But could there be an opportunity for the Germany-based leisure carrier, Condor Airlines to capitalize upon India’s rapidly expanding major secondary markets, as Lufthansa has done with the metro cities?
The major secondary markets of Amritsar, Ahmedabad, and Cochin, could be markets that may unlock significant opportunities for the airline to expand its network to India. Notably, the secondary cities are now leading the growth of international travel in India.
The airline on these routes could stimulate a great point-to-point (P2P) demand as well as benefit from a significant feeder traffic from these markets for its North American network ex-Frankfurt.
The P2P traffic between FRA-ATQ/AMD/COK in the year 2019 were as follows:
- ATQ-FRA: 7,576
- AMD-FRA: 8,240
- COK-FRA: 14,425
The above figures may not seem to be much promising. However, the presence of significant diaspora of the Punjab, Gujarat, and Kerela origin will ensure considerable point-to-point demand.
The routes will also promote tourism, business, and trade between these markets to a certain extent, thus generating new demand as well.
Condor Airlines extensive network across North America, including, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle, etc will also enable the airline to benefit from significant feeder traffic from these markets, especially from Amritsar and Ahmedabad.
As the airline continues to induct new highly fuel-efficient A330-900neo aircraft in it’s fleet in the near future, the airline could potentially look at evaluating the commercial and economic viability of these markets for its future expansion and growth.
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