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India’s Booming Bangalore Airport Racks Up New Markets - Munich, Seattle, Tokyo Are Coming This Year

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Last week’s surprise announcement that American Airlines will begin Seattle-Bangalore service in October may have been the first time the U.S. airline industry turned its attention to India’s third largest airport.

But the rest of the world had already caught on to Bangalore’s potential, enabling hugely rapid growth for the airport that serves the region known as the Silicon Valley of India.

In March, Lufthansa will begin Munich-Bangalore and Japan Air Lines will begin Tokyo Narita-Bangalore.

“Bangalore’s time has come,” said Hari Marar, airport managing director and CEO of Kempegowda International Airport.

 “Bangalore is the technology capital of the country,” Marar said. “It has an edge over the rest of the country: It has a knowledge economy. A lot of youngsters are here and they do a lot of travel. We have a large population of Indian urban migrant labor, educated people who come to Bangalore to work.

“This has always been a city of tremendous potential,” now being realized, he said. Bangalore joins Delhi and Mumbai in offering non-stop U.S. service.

Kempegowda (airport code BLR) opened in 2008, replacing an older airport, and is now in the midst of a $2 billion expansion program. It opened a second 13,000-foot runway in December. 

Passenger count in fiscal year 2019 was about 33.3 million, up 22% from the previous year and up 170% from 12.3 million in fiscal year 2010. The airport projects that traffic will increase to about 60 million in five years.

Bangalore has service to Europe’s four key hubs: Amsterdam on KLM, Frankfurt on Lufthansa, London on British Airways and Paris on Air France. Munich expands that list. For Asia, JAL will join Singapore Airlines and Dragon, which serve Hong Kong, and SriLankan Airlines. For Africa service, the airport added Ethiopian Airlines to Addis Ababa in 2019.

The three Middle East carriers –Emirates, Etihad and Qatar – also serve Bangalore. They carry about 40% of the airport’s U.S. traffic, which totals about 700,000 passengers (origin and destination) annually, through their hubs. About 30% of U.S. traffic uses European carriers, another 30% use hubs in Asia, and a small percentage – typically government travelers – use Air India.

“It’s high time we get direct flights to the markets we travel to,” Marar said.

To that end, three BLR officials traveled to North America in the second half of January, making the case for service in presentations to the continent’s four top global airlines: Air Canada, American, Delta and United.  (Marar, busy with airport improvements, did not travel.)

“This was not a new effort: it’s something we’ve been gently chipping away at for three or four years,” Marar said. But in the past, he said, “We meet for 20 minutes on the sidelines of routes conferences,” where airlines and airports gather.

January was different. “We met with them all in their headquarters, spoke with them, and presented a very detailed business case,” Marar said. “All of the airlines were interested; They all said they were looking at in Bangalore. The biggest issue was whether aircraft were available. The decision to invest $300 million in a route is a big decision.”

American responded quickly, announcing the route on Feb. 13. “We were surprised at the speed with which they came back to us,” Marar said.

American spokeswoman Nichelle Barrett said that at the time of the meeting, American was preparing to announce its partnership with Alaska Airlines “and the introduction of the West Coast gateway in Seattle, which would enable the route to work on a 787-9.” She said the airport groups’ visit “did help us with a few outstanding questions in the market.”

 Meanwhile, Delta spokeswoman Kyla Ross said, “We recently launched JFK-Mumbai service, but we have no additional service plans to India to share”.

Marar isn’t stopping here. He said he is talking to Korean Airlines about Seoul service, he would still like to have a flight to the U.S. East Coast, and he is talking with Air China about Chengdu service. Chengdu, he said, is the Silicon Valley of China. Why not link to one more of the world’s technology hubs?

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