New Delhi: British Airways on Friday pitched for more liberalised air service agreements that will allow it to operate more flights to Delhi and Mumbai from the UK.
The airline is seeing more balanced growth in India and has increased its weekly flights to India – Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, and Hyderabab – to 56 compared to the pre-pandemic level of 49, British Airways Chairman and CEO Sean Doyle told reporters during a roundtable on Friday.
“Our airline is 103 years old and we have been flying to India for 99 years… India is a very important market for us. We have 35 weekly flights to Delhi (twice daily) and Mumbai (thrice daily),” Doyle said.
He added that under the bilateral air service agreement, while some markets do need approval to expand, expansion in other markets can be based on the opportunity that the airlines see. “Mumbai and Delhi are subject to an air services agreement. I think as demand grows and as the economy develops, it is very important that air services keep pace with that…long with Virgin Atlantic, British carriers are fully utilising the current rights to Delhi and Mumbai,” Doyle added.
Speaking at the same roundtable here, the airline’s Chief Customer Officer, Calum Laming, said that British Airways, which started flying into India in 1924, has more than 2,000 employees in the country. The company’s global employee strength is about 35,000 people.
Doyle, who was in India to open the airline’s new call centre in Gurgaon that will service the airline’s customers globally, said that “everybody has been surprised by the speed of recovery (from the pandemic)” that India has seen.
This, he said, is primarily driven by pent-up demand, and “there is also a demand for visiting friends and relatives (VFR) on both sides and the size of the Indian diaspora in the UK. Almost 30% of our traffic is connected to the US. Doyle added that while business and corporate travel are yet to pick up, strong demand is coming from leisure and VFR travel.
Meanwhile, in a statement, the company said it has officially opened ‘CallBA’, its new call centre located in Gurugram, to cater to travellers across the globe. The centre employs 1,400 employees and will offer “round-the-clock support to thousands of customers from the US and Europe through to Asia Pacific.”
The statement added that Indian customers travelling between Mumbai, Delhi, and Bangalore can enjoy the airline’s newly designed Club Suite (business class) cabin, with direct aisle access, a suite door for greater privacy, and luxurious flat-bed seats in a 1-2-1 configuration. “Flyers will also soon start to see the new British Airways uniform, as cabin crew, pilots, and check-in agents switch over to the airline’s first new uniform in 20 years,” it conluded.
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