A very American-Indian piece of news got lost in the endless excitement over US President Donald Trump’s visit to India. Last week, American Airlines said it would launch a daily non-stop flight between Seattle and Bengaluru from October.

I, too, would have missed this development if Craig Jenks, a veteran and respected aviation industry analyst, had not alerted me about its significance.

According to Jenks, president of Airline/Aircraft Projects, an aviation consultancy based in New York, the flight combines three bold “first-ever” features:

*

It is the first-ever Bengaluru-US non-stop flight.

* It is the first-ever India-Seattle non-stop flight.

* It is the first-ever non-stop flight by American Airlines to India.

American is one of the Big 3 airlines in the US (Delta and United are the other two). The timings and frequency have not been announced yet but tickets will go on sale at the end of this month.

American will operate a 285-seater Boeing 787-9 aircraft on this route. The aircraft will have 30 seats in Business class, 21 Premium Economy, 36 Main Cabin Extra and 198 Main Cabin (Economy), according to Jenks.

Potentially Good Traffic

The daily flight between the Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru and Seattle Tacoma Airport is expected to meet the demand for travel to Seattle and neighbouring areas in the US. Passengers will get better access to San Francisco, Silicon Valley, Denver, Arizona, Dallas and Chicago and they don’t have to go through multiple stopovers.

Given that Bengaluru is the tech hub of India and spawns steady to-and-fro traffic in the form of IT industry executives from both countries, it is surprising an airline has waited this long for such a flight.

The US-India air routes are dominated by Air India, which flies to Newark, New York, Washington, Chicago and San Francisco. United operates Newark to Mumbai and Delhi and San Francisco to Delhi. Delta recently launched a flight between New York and Mumbai. American Airlines flew New Delhi to Chicago from November 2005, but ended the route in March 2012.

The Seattle-Bengaluru flight would take the number of daily flights between the US and India from October to nine odd (see chart). While this seems substantial, these flights address only a small percentage of the total demand, according to an analysis by Airline/Aircraft Projects.

The consultancy estimates that if all US-India traffic were carried on non-stop US-India flights, 41x daily flights would be needed. This means that as of October (when the new American BLR-SEA starts) the non-stop capacity will only address about 23 percent of demand.

What about the remaining 77 percent? That is addressed 1-stop by Gulf, European and to some extent other Asian carriers, said Airline/Aircraft Projects.

The Importance of Bengaluru

For American, Bengaluru represents a riposte to both Delta, which recently launched flights between New York and Mumbai and Gulf carrier Emirates, which operates daily flights between Seattle and Dubai with good India connections, according to Jenks.

Bengaluru is the Indian metro farthest from the US. At 8,078 statute miles, it will be American’s second-longest long-haul flight after Dallas-Hong Kong.

Ameya Joshi, the founder of Network Thoughts, an aviation analysis website, said the India-North America market has been growing rapidly and American had no option but to throw in the hat after — even — Delta entered. “The airline seems to have gambled with the route which helps it to avoid a direct fight it with the other two major US carriers and Air India to Delhi and Mumbai,” he said.

That said, the distance and quantum of traffic would pose challenges for American. “Bengaluru is a long route and traffic is not as high as Mumbai or Delhi. Bengaluru traffic feeds into the Mumbai and Delhi departures but the reverse may not be the case,” said Joshi.

For the Bengaluru airport too, the American Airlines flight is significant. The airport said it recently launched new routes to Amsterdam and Addis Ababa, with Tokyo and Munich scheduled to begin shortly.

Bengaluru overtook Chennai as India’s third-largest airport in 2015. It now connects to 28 international destinations.

Joshi said the airport has been holding steady even after the suspension of Jet Airways while Mumbai has seen a decline in international air traffic movements. “It’ s a coup of sorts for Bengaluru airport to have a non-stop to USA and the first one to Seattle.”

First Published:Feb 25, 2020 12:02 PM IST