China Airlines of Taiwan has officially announced that it will be launching new 3 weekly nonstop flights from Delhi to FCO-Rome, Italy from December 1st 2009. The routing was originally TPE-BKK-FCO using an A 343 which has now been switched to TPE-DEL-FCO flown with an A 330-300. The flight timings are as follows:
Days of operation: TUE/THU/SUN
CI 071 Dep DEL 1425 Arr FCO 1840
CI 072 Dep FCO 2240 Arr DEL 1055+1 (next day)
Analysis:
An excellent move by CI to switch their FCO flight from BKK to DEL as no airline flies DEL-Italy nonstop and there is a big market to tap into. According to DGCA stats, over 40,000 passengers in 2008 flew from Delhi to Italy with 30% of that number bound to Rome where as the rest were largely headed towards MXP. The flight timings for this new DEL-FCO-DEL service are ideal for O&D VFR and business traffic alike and CI can easily feed this flight with pax from BOM/BLR/MAA/COK if it gets a good SPA with 9W or AI on the domestic India sectors.
There is a fair bit of tourist/missionary travel as well on this route due to FCO's close proximity to the Vatican. Lastly, cargo too would bring in solid $$$ for CI which will help increase the revenues of this flight.
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