The Gulf carriers are now competing among themselves. Qatar itself has made much of its infrastructural and branding upgrade after hosting the very successful Fifa World Cup in 2022, wresting much glitter from its rival airline-countries. These advantages are critical, but not enough to offset the essential disadvantage they face: traffic does not originate in West Asia. Asia is where the airline business is booming, and within that, the Indian aviation market is poised for blistering growth. It is also emerging from an extended phase of under-capitalisation with ambitions of creating its own airline transit hub.
As a first step, Indian airlines need to compensate for the high cost of jet fuel at home by flying to destinations where they can refuel aircraft cheaply. They will have to match Gulf carriers in offering services to the well-heeled traveller to Europe and America. This will sustain their extremely low margin domestic operations. Indian ‘home bases’, like Qatar for Qatar Airways, will have to draw (real, not notional) business and first-class passengers, and create ancillary industries to compete against established transit hubs like Dubai and Singapore. A ‘KolkatAir‘, for instance, with the right incentives and fuel economics, could well serve the eastern hinterland that gets a woefully low amount of traffic to become the gateway to, and from, East Asia.
