According to Yahoo India, Air France is contemplating increasing its presence in the market by launching new flights to Cochin, Calcutta, Goa in the near future and adding more frequencies to Chennai. The carrier is reportedly experiencing load factors in the high 80% on all its South India flights which has surprised people in their Paris head office.
My comments :
Goa is too much of a leisure market, fit for charter flights and not worthy of scheduled flights flown from CDG on a year round basis as the passenger data base is too low yielding. In anycase, according to the India-France air bilateral agreement signed on Feb 23rd 2005, AF can only fly to BOM/DEL/CCU/HYD/BLR/MAA with a maximum allocation of 35 flights per week to the country. This effectively rules out AF's ambitions to fly to COK & GOI any time soon as for it to happen, the bilateral agreement must be re-negiotiated first.
Currently, AF has daily flights to BOM, DEL, BLR and 4 weekly flights to MAA therefore 25 flights in total. It would be best if MAA is increased to daily with the A 332 / A 343 and the remaining 7 frequencies used to launch daily flights to HYD as this market has more high yielding potential than CCU does in the long term. Flights to HYD should be flown with an A 332 initially 4 times a week and then increased to daily after a year of flying the route.
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