India is on the verge to having its own aviation hubs with mega airports in places like Delhi creating the infra for the same and big desi carriers being wooed by foreign ones for last-mile connectivity. Air France-KLM wants to have a code share with IndiGo for international destinations in India’s neighbourhood like Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. Which means, it wants to fly people between these countries via India (on IndiGo) to and from its hubs in Paris and Amsterdam (on AF & KLM) while offering connections from these two places.
“We entered into a domestic code share agreement with IndiGo for 30 places within India last summer. Now we are planning international code share with IndiGo for nearby countries like Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. This is subject to approvals and agreements,” Air France-KLM GM (Indian subcontinent) Claude Sarre told TOI here on Thursday. Interestingly, KLM former president & CEO Pieter Elbers is now the CDO of IndiGo. Describing India as a “booming market” where all airlines are “trying to meet demand”, Sarre said the its technical personnel here helped overcome the shortage of personnel including aircraft maintenance engineers being seen globally. “Our India team now regularly sends its personnel to Amsterdam to help overcome this shortage,” he said.
The new premium economy seats unveiled by KLM in Gurgaon on Thursday
In fact, Air India is in talks with both German aircraft maintenance major Lufthansa Technik and Air France-KLM’s engineering unit to bid for AI Engineering Services Limited (AIESL) when the government goes ahead with its divestment. “We do maintenance for over 25 international airlines in India. We are the component supplier for IndiGo and Akasa,” said Kapil Bhardwaj, AF-KLM’s line maintenance manager.
AF-KLM combine currently has 46 weekly flights to four Indian cities — Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Chennai. Sarre says they are looking at Hyderabad also but no decision has been taken yet. “We are always eager to increase frequency to India and have 22% more flights at present than last summer,” Sarre, who unveiled the new premium economy seats here on Thursday, said.
The French-Dutch airlines combo as of now has no plans to invest in an Indian carriers and is only looking at more code share for now. “Despite the impact Covid had, we are spending a lot on capacity in terms of new planes and better passenger experience. We are investing on new Airbus A350s and A220 (mainly for Air France) and Boeing 787 (mainly for KLM),” Sarre said.
