Adani-owned Navi Mumbai International Airport will need to develop its supporting infrastructure to attract international airlines and expand operations, according to a senior executive at Emirates, India’s largest foreign carrier. The comments come as airlines and the airport operator work through a proposal to shift some international flights from Mumbai’s existing airport to the new facility.
“Until it gets kind of fully built in the ecosystem, I think it’s gonna be difficult for any of the airlines to shift there,” said Essa Sulaiman Ahmad, senior vice president, West Asia and Indian Ocean, commercial operations at Emirates.
Outlining the facilities needed to support international operations, Ahmad said, “At an airport, you will require a facility for catering, you will require a facility for, example, for cargo warehousing.”
Ahmad was in Delhi for the launch of Emirates’ A380 service with more premium seats.
Airlines push back
Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) had proposed temporarily discontinuing 265 of the 770 weekly international departure slots at Mumbai airport’s Terminal 2 from 25 October, as part of a plan to redistribute international flights to Navi Mumbai ahead of the redevelopment of Terminal 1. Adani Airport operates both facilities.
Emirates was among the carriers affected, with 10 of its 28 weekly departure slots listed for discontinuation.
Airlines opposed shifting a significant share of international operations to Navi Mumbai, around 50 km from the existing airport. The proposed transition has since been deferred by at least five months, giving the airport operator and airlines more time to work out an arrangement.
Emirates’ comments follow objections from Air France-KLM to splitting international operations between the two airports. Under the proposal, Air France was asked to shift three of its seven weekly departures to Navi Mumbai, while KLM was to move two of its six.
Navi Mumbai could give airlines access to additional catchment areas, including parts of the Pune region. Ahmad said. But attracting international carriers will depend on the airport’s operational infrastructure and whether airlines have the regulatory clearances needed to expand.
Flying rights
Infrastructure aside, Emirates faces another constraint: flying rights. The Dubai-based airline is already operating at the full capacity permitted under its existing entitlements and cannot expand its Indian network simply because a new airport has opened.
“I think for us, it’s plain and simple. We’ve been having our operations in Mumbai Airport for a very long time. We do not have additional rights,” Ahmad said, referring to the airline’s entitlements under the air services agreements governing its operations in India.
“For us right now, we are running at full capacity. We are running at full capacity of our entitlement,” he added.
Emirates operates 167 weekly flights to nine Indian cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, Thiruvananthapuram, Kochi, Bengaluru and Kolkata. Mumbai and Delhi are its largest Indian stations, with 28 weekly flights to each. The airline offers 67,000 seats a week across its Indian network.
In the past 12 months, India has brought three international airports into operation: Navi Mumbai, Jewar in Uttar Pradesh and Bhogapuram in Andhra Pradesh. Emirates does not currently serve any of the three.
Bilateral air services agreements determine how many flights airlines can operate between countries and the capacity they can deploy. A new airport does not automatically give a foreign carrier permission to add flights or expand its network.
Emirates would consider operating from new airports and exploring additional destinations if the Indian government granted it more flying rights, Ahmad said.
“Until and unless we get more additional flights, and we get additional (entitlements) from the government, then we will definitely look at airports, or multiple new airports that have come up,” he said, adding that any decision to shift operations would also depend on whether a new airport had the facilities Emirates needed, including catering and cargo infrastructure.
Ahmad said the Indian and United Arab Emirates governments continue to discuss aviation matters, reiterating the importance of the Indian market to the airline.
“We always believe in the importance of Indian market. We’ve seen it, you know? We carried more than 92 million customers in the past 41 years,” he said.