City airport losing int'l passengers?

NAGPUR: It is strange but true. Just a few months back when rising airfares and poor load factor had badly affected domestic flights from the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport, international flights were operating with satisfactory load factor. However, now when domestic air traffic is picking up again, with almost all the airlines reducing airfares, the poor load factor is affecting the operation of international flights.

According to sources, all the three flights from Nagpur to international sectors like Dubai (Air India Express), Sharjah (Air Arabia) and Doha (Qatar Airways) have been operating with very poor load factor in the last few months.

Sources said, “The airport received its official international status after Air Arabia started its Sharjah flights in October 2005. In the earlier stages demand was good and so Air Arabia tried operating the flight five days a week; but constraints forced it to downgrade it to four days. Presently, the airlines operates the flights thrice a week and that too with just 40-45% load factor.” The airlines was many a time forced to cancel its flights from Nagpur in the past few months due to poor bookings.

A senior Air Arabia official said, “The Sharjah and Dubai flights were attracting nearly 75% passengers (specially labourers working in Gulf countries) from neighbouring states like Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh. It was convenient for these passengers to travel by bus or train to Nagpur and subsequently board the flight to Sharjah and Dubai.”

“Air Arabia recently introduced low-cost daily flights to Sharjah from Hyderabad airport. A daily Dubai flight is also available from same airport which diverts a major chunk of passengers from Nagpur,” the official added. Moreover, since the visa formalities for Gulf countries (specially for labourers) have become tougher the poor load factor from Nagpur has fallen.

An official of Air India Express said, “We operate three weekly flights on Mumbai-Nagpur-Ahmedabad-Dubai route. We get more passengers for Nagpur-Ahmedabad routes than Dubai. The flight would not have received a response had it flown directly to Dubai.”

Sources said, “The Doha flights of Qatar Airways were projected as connecting flights to London, Washington, New York and Paris from Nagpur. However, it did not generate much response from here.” The airline officials, however, refused to comment on the issue.
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