Emirates seeks more seats in India, says it will increase competition & reduce fares

Middle-East's international airline Emirates that caters a large chunk  of India's air passenger traffic to the Gulf region has once again made a strong pitch for  increasing the weekly seat entitlement from 65,000 under the bilateral Air Service Agreement between India & UAE, which remains unchanged for almost a decade now.

Emirates has been using all the allocated capacity leaving no further scope for it to grow in the Indian market amid a booming demand.

Adnan Kazim, Chief Commercial Officer at Emirates told CNBC-TV18 that freezing of the flying rights despite increasing movement of people between India and UAE is not a 'healthy environment.'

"We're fully engaged with the government to see if there is any way to add more capacity in the future. But definitely, the current situation which we are in requires more capacity & more flexibility, more places and even routes to be added in the future," said Kazim.

Kazim also attributed the surge in airfares to the restricted capacity saying that opening up the skies will ease up prices.

"The more you open up, the more you give air access to the consumer, the more you create competition, and the more you ease up the prices because this is all about demand and supply. On one side you have a lot of pressure coming from supply but at the same time seats under bilateral agreement was last increased in 2014. Since then, population increased, number of travellers increased, trade exchange has gone up tremendously and that needs capacity to be enhanced," Kazim said.

Indian airlines flying to Middle East face stiff competition from carriers like Emirates that claims offering a better product and flying experience to passengers especially on long haul routes. Air India after being bought by the Tatas has been trying to change that perception with investments worth $400 million going into refurbishment of its wide-body aircraft fleet.

Kazim said Emirates welcomes competition from Air India with the airline expanding international presence and adds more capacity.

"We live in Dubai where 130 airlines are operating under an open sky policy. Emirates has a network of 220 destinations connecting Dubai with the world. We always welcome competition, we have 29 codeshare partners, one single airline cannot bring in everything to you, you need to bring in that sort of collaboration and harmony. Whether Air India or any other carrier, we always welcome this kind of competition and I think it's good for the consumer because it creates more choices," Kazim added.

Emirates on Thursday announced it is set to roll out premium economy cabin on its A380 flight from Mumbai & Bengaluru to Dubai starting October 29. The airline expects the new offering to attract more passengers. India is the sixth market for Emirates after UK, US, Australia, New Zealand and Singapore to offer premium economy service and the airline plans to extend it to other routes as well.

"At least 60 to 70% of our network will gradually be getting the Premium Economy product. 120 aircraft from our fleet will be retrofitted over two and half years with premium economy cabins. We started with retrofitting 20 aircraft that is the A380s, this number will increase to 67 in the future. Then next year, we'll be starting with the Boeing 777s, 53 of them will be going through retrofit process. Part of the premium economy deployment will come in from the new product as well which is starting from summer next year. In August next year, we're getting Airbus 350 aircraft, we'll be getting 50 aircraft over a period of three and half years and all of them will come in with premium economy product embedded. We will be getting the Boeing 777X in end of 2025, that will also come with a premium economy," Kazim said sharing the timeline.