AirAsia’s announcement to offer two million discounted seats for travel between January and April 2014 may not trigger a price war in the aviation sector but will surely give a huge push to outbound international passengers from the Indian airports connected by the airline.
With two million seats on offer getting sold, Bangalore, Kolkata, Chennai, Kochi and Trichy would get to cater around 20 per cent more international passengers.
According to data from the Airports Authority of India (AAI), these five airports catered to over 10.1 million of the total 35 million outbound international passengers from India during the period from April 2012 and January 2013.
?This offer will surely generate demand and will see more and more people flying international from these destinations. This offer, and many such offer in the future, will also help low-cost carriers (LCCs) increase their market share in the international sector,? said Himanshu Singh managing director of Travelocity, an on-line portal.
In the international sector from India, LCCs carry 15 to 20 per cent passenger numbers and that is going to increase to 40 per cent in the next five years. The offer by AirAsia was not countered by any other competing carrier in the first day of the discount sale.
But travel industry insider feels that the airlines will soon respond. ?The airlines may not have responded today but this is just the first day of the offer tickets and I expect the airlines to respond,? said Sabina Chopra, co-founder and EVP-operations at yatra.com, an on-line portal.
Chopra added that the competing carriers like SpiceJet and IndiGo might not have been seen an impact on the first day because they do not operate flights from the destination AirAsia does but will soon see an impact.
On Monday, AirAsia announced discounted fares for travel between January 1 and April 30, 2014, to South Asian destinations from Indian destinations like Kolkata, Chennai and Bangalore.
Around 2 million tickets on offer are available on the airline?s website from April 2 to April 7, 2013 and will soon be available on travel portals also. The offer is open to fliers in other South-East Asian markets as well.
