Air India

[nwoody2001]

There isn't enough demand for a Mumbai-Birmingham route unfortunately

I love these statements... made as if they are unchangeable truths or facts...

Demand is not constant, can evolved, shift and be generated... Evidence suggests there wasn't enough demand between Manchester and India to make a route viable, but now we have Indigo coming in!

When it comes to the largest country in the world with one of the largest and fastest growing middle classes ever known in human history, can we please stop making such stupid and clearly unqualified statements please!

 

[Birmingham Aviation]

No need to dig at Ben mate but unfortunately he is correct .Can’t see it happening for the next couple of years

Indigo Airlines to launch Manchester-India flights | Behramjee Ghadially posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Yesterday, India's Indigo Airlines (6E) announced the launch of their long haul route network with Manchester and Amsterdam being the inaugural routes effective July 2025 using a wet leased Boeing 787-9 from Norse Atlantic. It is expected that both routes would be operated 3 times per week each...

www.linkedin.com

 

[Karl C]

No need to dig at Ben mate but unfortunately he is correct .Can’t see it happening for the next couple of years

Indigo Airlines to launch Manchester-India flights | Behramjee Ghadially posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Yesterday, India's Indigo Airlines (6E) announced the launch of their long haul route network with Manchester and Amsterdam being the inaugural routes effective July 2025 using a wet leased Boeing 787-9 from Norse Atlantic. It is expected that both routes would be operated 3 times per week each...

www.linkedin.com

There's every need to question sweeping and unqualified statements like that Ant !!

 

[Birmingham Aviation]

I do see demand increasing for ATQ and DEL

 

[gulftraveller]

Airlines must research routes carefully. They may well take into consideration future growth, but they can withstand losses only for a limited period. The current figures of unserved routes from BOM suggest BHX is not the highest priority, particularly at a time when Air India is short of aircraft. The same would be true for MAN-ATQ. Many passengers will transfer to domestic services which can be done just as well at DEL as at BOM.

 

[IanFarquharson]

I do see demand increasing for ATQ and DEL

The issue at the moment is the airspace closure adding up to 2h 30min to the flight time which will hit profiability especially on ATQ plus loads are poor due to the troubles in the area.

 

[Ray Finkle]

The same route that consistently appears as one of the most connected to destinations out of Birmingham?

 

[nwoody2001]

I do see demand increasing for ATQ and DEL

Ok, so lets ignore the reasonable case I put forward, because you "don't see it"...

• The largest country in the world
• One of the fastest growing economies in the world at 7.2% - vastly outstripping most of the worlds developed countries
• One of the largest growing and increasingly mobile middle classes in the world
• Fastest growing destinations in both inward and outbound travel in the world, and
• Air India is set to become one of the fastest growing airlines in the world with nearly 600 aircraft on order....

India is debatably THE centre of aviation growth in the next decade, much more so than China and many other Asian and middle east countries.

And whether you see it or not Ant, even BHX's own figures prove you wrong...

As of the end of April (prior to the resent unrest in India/Pakistan), AI Pax levels to both ATQ and DEL were up 20.6% Year To Date - that's an additional 10,000 pax in just 4 months, even with all the competition from EK/QR/SV and TK...

No need to dig at Ben mate but unfortunately he is correct .Can’t see it happening for the next couple of years

Indigo Airlines to launch Manchester-India flights | Behramjee Ghadially posted on the topic | LinkedIn

Yesterday, India's Indigo Airlines (6E) announced the launch of their long haul route network with Manchester and Amsterdam being the inaugural routes effective July 2025 using a wet leased Boeing 787-9 from Norse Atlantic. It is expected that both routes would be operated 3 times per week each...

www.linkedin.com

I'm not sure what you think this linkedin post proves or suggests? An airport that is nearly 3x as large as BHX has nearly 3x as much people travelling to India? This is surely stating the obvious no?

 

[Iron Duck]

I find it totally preposterous that Air India would willingly choose the supposedly smaller market for their regional services over the years. No doubt Mumbai would be better served from BHX imo, although both airports have demand.

 

[nwoody2001]

Hardly, having less than 20,000 people travelling in an year is not viable for a route. No airline is going to look at that stat irrelevant of the size of the airport so I'm just being realistic

So what makes you correct then?
BHX's India traffic is heavily focused to the north, the south as you can clearly see from the graph that Ant posted, doesn't see much demand. It's all VFR traffic to ATQ.
MAN with Indigo are timed for Virgin US connections as it'll be their main connection point for the two airlines, plus the demand they already had to Mumbai and Delhi, so that explains why they are getting a service.

Where on earth have you got "less than 20,000 pax a year" from? Air India carried nearly 140,000 Pax in 2024 from BHX!

Yes the current demand is dominated by VFR Traffic which has supported routes between BHX and both ATQ/DEL for decades. My points being - as stated in many of the above reasons - there are a lot of other potential and very much growing markets.

 

[jfy1999]

With Mumbai, as with many other destinations, one also has to wonder how many midlands passengers are being lost down the M40.

LHR-BOM and LHR- DEL both have about seven flights per day!

It also doesn’t help that our Delhi flights only operate three times per week and as DEL is the main hub for AI connections, this will limit the number of days passengers can connect onward to destinations within India.

In the past, our flights routed through DEL every day of the week. Maybe the data from back then might have been a much better indicator of demand for onward connections. If the data is out there, I’d be interested to see how the figures for connections today compare with the figures before they started the direct flights at ATQ.

 

[Karl C]

I'm talking about the amount of passengers that travelled between Birmingham and Mumbai in 2024. Maybe if you would of studied the graph you would of realised

As Jfy1999 alluded to above, BHX leaks a fair amount of traffic to London. The 20000 figure wouldn't take that into account. Friends of mine always use Virgin from LHR to BOM.....they won't be the only ones.

 

[Ray Finkle]

BHX leaks a fair amount of traffic to London. The 20000 figure wouldn't take that into account. Friends of mine always use Virgin from LHR to BOM.....they won't be the only ones.

Exactly.

I'd be amazed if those figures included the post code data for the pax who make surface journeys to LHR.

I can't say I'll be losing much sleep over it

 

[nwoody2001]

I'm talking about the amount of passengers that travelled between Birmingham and Mumbai in 2024. Maybe if you would of studied the graph you would of realised

Yeah, you seem to have spent too much time on table and very little time understanding how demand works. That table is "satisfied demand" flying between 2 airports. Unsurprisingly an airport with 3-4x the amounts of flights satisfies 3-4x the amount of demand. Flip the amount of capacity from MAN to BHX and they figures will likely do the same.

if you used the same exercise to look at BHX-DXB or BHX-DOH demand, there again would unlikely be enough demand for a flight... but there are 3x daily flights between those two destinations!!!

 

[Karl C]

That may very well be a factor, but the number would still be very low. You already have EK, QR, SV, TK, AI, KL, AF and LH who will all offer options to connect to Mumbai with one stop yet the number is that low.

The fact remains that nobody knows the leakage figure. One can only guess it's low or high. BHX will get a BOM service one day amongst many others. Also forgot that a travel agent friend of mine not long ago did a tour of India and also used the Virgin from LHR to BOM. I reckon we'd be quite surprised at how many choose nonstop over indirect.

 

[nwoody2001]

Indeed. Manchester Airport leakage is near non-existent. Passangers either fly from Manchester either to a European or Middle East Hub, or from Heathrow, which is still captured as most will connect into Heathrow via the British Airways Shuttle. All this traffic is captured as Manchester originating traffic. only a small percentage will be lost to BHX to those wishing to travel direct on AI to ATQ or DEL.

However, anyone who travels from the midlands up to Manchester or down to Heathrow is not captured as Midland originating traffic. And with Heathrow having so many direct flights to India, I suspect this true market of Midlands to India traffic will only ever been known by the airlines...

Alas, the table on the LinkedIn post is only of value to Manchester and has little weight in informing the actual market of midland originating traffic travelling to India.

 

[A330]

My only issue is when people post such reports as hard facts. It's data taken from sites such as OAG with one stop routings between city pairs. This is only accurate if the journey started at the local airport.

As the previous posts have mentioned already, the report does not capture the thousands of journeys down the M40 to Heathrow travelling on non stop flights to India. The M40 is largely a trouble free motorway where you can actually drive at 70mph, thus journey is rarely more than 2 hours to Heathrow. Given the choice between a connection via hub or a 2 hour drive then direct flight, it's no surprise people choose the latter.

I had to smile when I clicked on the link and saw who the article was written by. I'm certain it's the same person who would post on airliners.net over 25 years ago. I noticed back then he never gave BHX any credit with his fantasy routings! I'm not in anyway arguing that Manchester is not massively ahead of Birmingham, however, some of the data on there is questionable. Is BHX really that far behind in traffic?

If we produced a similar report for EMA to India, I'm sure the data would show close to 0% percent demand to India. Yet just 20 miles down the road there is a sizeable market travelling to India in the city of Leicester. The same can be said for Leeds to Islamabad.

So, in conclusion reports such as the above are generally a good guide provided we bear in mind many will also be travelling by road.

 

[Ray Finkle]

Indeed.

So can we please draw a line under this one and move on

I must admit I didn't realise how little long haul Air India have out of BOM, only Heathrow and Frankfurt in Europe. It seems clear that the focus is to turn DEL into their major hub.

So whilst it's nice to see new destinations on the board I wonder if it would actually be more beneficial for BHX to concentrate growth on getting DEL back up to daily with a 3/4x weekly ATQ as well?

 

[Birmingham Aviation]

Indeed.

So can we please draw a line under this one and move on

I must admit I didn't realise how little long haul Air India have out of BOM, only Heathrow and Frankfurt in Europe. It seems clear that the focus is to turn DEL into their major hub.

So whilst it's nice to see new destinations on the board I wonder if it would actually be more beneficial for BHX to concentrate growth on getting DEL back up to daily with a 3/4x weekly ATQ as well?

Thank you ray.Lets end conflict and focus on the ACL and easyJet today

 

[jfy1999]

Discussion about the tragic crash in Ahmedabad has now been moved to the worldwide Air India thread.
Thinking and praying for all involved.

Air India

Air India workers on hunger strike over pay cuts More than 20,000 employees of Air India, the cash-strapped state-owned airline, began a three-day hunger strike yesterday to protest against plans to cut their pay, union officials said. The fast, which managers insisted would not affect...

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