Smooth take off for aviation in 2017

TT BUREAU

David Lim, General Manager – India, Singapore Airlines

Singapore Airlines completed 70 years of operations in 2017. On July 1, the Airbus A350-900 commenced operations on the Mumbai-Singapore route. Singapore Airlines took delivery of its first A350-900 in March 2016 and now has 18 of the aircraft type in its fleet, with another 49 on firm order, including seven of an ultra-long-range A350-900ULR variant. Earlier this year, we also added a fourth-weekly flight from Ahmedabad owing to increased travel demand from the city. Singapore Airlines has signed a codeshare agreement with several airlines like Vistara, Ethiopian Airlines and Air France KLM.

Tadesse Tilahun, Regional Director – India Sub Continent, Ethiopian Airlines

As the year 2017 draws to a close, despite lingering political and economic conditions affecting the aviation industry, we are pleased to report that we carried nearly nine million passengers to more than 100 international destinations across five continents during the year. Our passengers were delighted to board 92 of our youngest fleet of aircraft besides the newly introduced B787-9. With several awards that the airline won this year, the year was very promising.

Ihab A. Sorial, Senior Vice President (International Sales), Oman Air

It has been a challenging year for us with increased capacity in the market and lower demands. Growth was small but nimble. But we managed to enhance our capacity and harness our focus on premium segmentation and diversification of business which helped us maximise revenues and lower losses. Though we saw a slight impact of demonetisation, it was business as usual for us after some time. We saw a growth of 20 per cent in terms of capacity and we outgrew this in terms of revenue as well.

Dr. Ankur Bhatia Executive, Director, Bird Group & Member of CII’s Core Committee on Aviation

With the consistent surge in domestic tourism, 2017 started on a positive note for aviation, travel and hospitality industry. India became the third largest aviation market as domestic air traffic showed consistent growth. The hospitality industry, however, faced several roadblocks but has made an encouraging recovery in the last quarter. The industry’s dependence on technology is growing to improve efficiency, accelerate profitability and we expect Global Distribution Systems (GDS) to become more deeply embedded across these sectors.

Leslie Thng, CEO, Vistara

Our motto in 2017 continued to be driving growth through product and service innovations. We witnessed a remarkable market acceptance with more customers applauding our unique value propositions and making us their favourite airline. On the back of fleet expansion, we strengthened our network to multiply frequencies on existing routes and add new destinations such as Amritsar, Leh and Ranchi. We inducted the A320neo aircraft into our fleet and unveiled several product enhancements in the new aircraft.