Kingfisher Airlines spreads its wings in Thailand

AVIATION

India's Kingfisher Airlines makes its first foray into Thai airspace today with its launch of a daily flight between Bangkok and Kolkata.

Ramachandran: Kingfisher will grab a 35% market share on the Bangkok-Kolkata route

The airline competes with three other carriers on the Thailand-India route.

Kingfisher, which dubs itself India's only five-star airline, initially expects to capture about a third of the market on the Bangkok-Kolkata route, where it vies with Thai Airways International and another Indian carrier, Jet Airways.

"We hope to capture 34-35% of market share from Bangkok-Kolkata in the next six months," said Siva Ramachandran, vice-president for global sales at Kingfisher.

As part of its aggressive move to capitalise on growing air traffic between Thailand and India, Kingfisher plans to launch two additional routes this year: Bangkok-Mumbai and Bangkok-Delhi.

The carrier is also considering flights from Bangkok to Chennai to cash in on traders' traffic demand sometime next year, said Mr Ramachandran.

Kingfisher has already sought approval from the Indian government to operate flights from Mumbai and Delhi to the Thai capital on a daily basis.

"It's matter of bureaucracy, but we will [eventually] get it," he said.

The launch of the Bangkok-Kolkata flight marks Kingfisher's first service between India and Southeast Asia.

Bangkok is the fifth international destination in Kingfisher's international network after London, Colombo, Dhaka and Dubai. Kingfisher started making international flights last year.Next month, the carrier will begin regular services from Mumbai to Singapore and Hong Kong, using wide-body Airbus A330-300 jets.

Because it claims a competitive fare pricing strategy and superior in-flight products and services, Kingfisher hopes to gradually build the load factor on its Bangkok-Kolkata route to about 55% in the first two months of operations, before reaching 75%, the break-even point, in the third or fourth month.

A key to luring passengers to Kingfisher's Bangkok-Kolkata route is its introductory all-inclusive round-trip fare of 6,500 baht.

Traffic demand from Thai nationals, including Thailand-born Indians, on the Bangkok-Kolkata route has been rising steadily, growing from 11,029 in 2007 to 12,306 in 2008 and 5,364 in the first half of this year, said Jyotibrata Ghosh, Kingfisher's manager for Thailand and Cambodia.

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