The Big Picture of the South Asian airline market
Since we’ve been examining various details of operating flights to South Asia, such as demand, service offering, marketing and operational challenges recently, let’s talk about the bigger picture in today’s installment of the South Asia 101 series.
Network Contribution
Many South Asian communities live in North America and Australia in large numbers, but these regions still do not have any proper air links to South Asia. As I already pointed in the article on demand, the largest Sri Lankan community outside their motherland resides in Australia and the largest Pakistani and Indian communities live in U.K and North America respectively. But due to the lack of enough capacity and in many cases direct air links, most of these passengers connect at larger hubs such as Dubai and Singapore. If your airline is able to provide a good and cheaper connectivity to many city centres in North America or Australia, your airline will certainly have a great chance in getting a large number of connecting passengers. However, often due to undercapacity, many South Asians connect to many other destinations throughout the world via other airlines even if there are direct air services. Because of this your flights to and from South Asia will have a good number of connecting traffic and there will be a considerable contribution to the network from your South Asian flights. The whole connecting market to Europe is served by a handful of Middle Eastern carriers and there is enough space for a new player and still many underserved markets.
South Asia is the world’s most densely populated region and has the world’s fastest growing air travel market for the next 20 years.
South Asians value service, but it does not mean you need to provide a first class service in economy class as well. Customer service and treating them well are the most important.
Since South Asians value image more than the brand, your airline is better prefer to create a good brand image than just promoting your brand.
Biggest challenge that you will face will be regulations and protectionism, but these things are slowly progressing at getting better towards airlines.
The region still lacks connections from many global centres, specially from North America, and hence the region generates a lot of connecting traffic.
If you work hard and fly right, you will be able to grab a good portion of the South Asian market. It is not a market that is so easy to crack, or to compete, but it certainly is not hand if you do it right and the main focus of the South Asia 101 series was giving you tips on some best and right ways to crack the South Asia market.
By executing similar practices, many airlines have found success in this region and I wish you all the best !
I hope this article series was helpful to you. I intend to release this article series as a whitepaper depending on the demand. I am also available for consultation work.
If you wish to have the whitepaper and/or got any ideas , please leave a comment and let me know. Your feedback is highly appreciated. Thanks !
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