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| Nick Pilbeam, Divisional Director, Reed Travel Exhibitions |
·
New
route development forum will place spotlight on India’s vast aviation potential
as country continues to increase airline frequency to the GCC
·
Domestic
air passenger traffic in India registered 18.6% growth last year despite rising
fuel costs and recent weak Rupee exchange rates
More
than 30
airlines have confirmed their participation at the inaugural CONNECT
Middle East, India & Africa – co-located with Arabian
Travel Market 2019 and taking place at Dubai World Trade Centre on
Tuesday 30th April and Wednesday 1st May.
Senior
network planning teams from a wide range of legacy and low-cost carriers
including Emirates,
Etihad,
China Southern
Airlines, Jordan Aviation, Air Asia,
flydubai,
Gulf Air,
Oman Air
and Azerbaijan
Airlines as well as SpiceJet and Air India are
among those already registered.
In
India, which has one of the world’s largest aviation industries, more than
678,000 flights departed from its top five airports in 2018 – with these
airports possessing the capacity to manage 118.07 million passengers, an
additional 12.32 million passengers when compared with figures from 2017,
according to data published in the latest ANKER report.
Nick Pilbeam,
Divisional Director, Reed Travel Exhibitions,
said: “Despite rising fuel costs and unstable Rupee exchange rates, which has led
to the Rupee losing around 14% of its value against the US dollar over the last
12 months, 2018 has been an exciting year for India’s aviation market.
“The
country has recorded the world’s fastest growing domestic aviation market for
the past three years, according to IATA, with domestic air passenger traffic
registering a healthy 18.6% growth in 2018 underscoring the country’s vast
market potential.”
Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport
remained India’s busiest airport in 2018 followed by Chhatrapati Shivaji
Maharaj International Airport Mumbai, Kempegowda International Airport
Bengaluru, Chennai International Airport and Rajiv Gandhi Hyderabad
International Airport.
Meanwhile, seven airlines - IndiGo, Jet
Airways, Air India, SpiceJet, GoAir, Air Asia India and Vistara – continuing to
dominate the aviation market, operating 1.04 million of India’s total 1.25
million flights in 2018, the data from ANKER revealed.
In
the UAE alone, there are currently 1,065 weekly flights to India corresponding
to 130,000 seats per week – with on-going bilateral talks continuing to take
place to increase airline frequency between India and all GCC countries.
Karin Butot,
CEO, The
Airport Agency, said: “Amid new route developments, rapid airport
expansions and rising middle-class income - air passenger numbers to, from and
within India are set to more than triple over the next 20 years to over 500
million journeys a year.
“India’s aviation industry presents enormous
potential on a global scale and CONNECT Middle East, India & Africa 2019 is
the perfect forum to realise this potential. Bringing together high-level
executives from the country’s aviation and tourism industry, the event will offer
delegates unlimited opportunities for one-to-one pre-scheduled networking
appointments.”
With up to 300 delegates, the inaugural CONNECT
Middle East, India & Africa will also include a packed conference programme,
panel discussion and airline & industry briefings as well as unlimited
one-to-one meetings pre-scheduled for airlines, airports and suppliers – all
combined with endless informal opportunities for networking throughout the two
days.
Kicking-off the two-day event will be a
training workshop entitled ‘The Simpson Paradox in Donut Crunching’ taking
place between 9.15am – 10.15am on Tuesday 30th April. This session
will discuss and evaluate the ‘Simpson Paradox’ while explaining how to achieve
better data accuracy when estimating a route potential, or when analysing the
performance of your competitors.
Rounding off the first day, a panel entitled
‘Regional Focus: What are the opportunities and challenges for the Middle East
region?’ will address the on-going geo-political challenges and volatile fuel
prices affecting the aviation industry at present while discussing how new and
emerging destinations are positioning themselves to attract and develop
significant air passenger traffic.
Another highlight will be keynote from John
Strickland, CEO of JLS Consulting which will explore the key characteristics of
the Indian, African and Gulf aviation markets, while discussing the importance
of new aircraft types and the impact of new airline business models.
CONNECT Middle East, India & Africa will
form part of the newly launched Arabian Travel Week,
an umbrella brand comprising four co-located shows including ATM 2019; ILTM Arabia
and new consumer-led event – ATM Holiday Shopper. Arabian
Travel Week will take place at Dubai World Trade Centre from 27 April – 1 May
2019.
