Business

Taiwan's airline launches India operations

By Our Special Correspondent

NEW DELHI APRIL 5. Taiwan's largest airline, China Airlines, has launched its operations from India from April 2, with promotional fares for the first fortnight. The airline has permission to fly directly out of Delhi to Taipei thrice a week. It will use an Airbus 300-600R for its India operations. However, India's designated airlines, Air India, will not exercise its rights under the bilateral agreement between the two countries.

It will provide non-stop service and fast connectivity from Delhi to the west coast of America, Canada, Japan, Hong Kong and Honolulu with a minimum stop-over at the hub, Taipei. The flight operating from Delhi will provide the shortest one-stop service to Vancouver with connectivity time of less than 19 hours. In addition, the airline also offers the shortest connectivity service of less than 22 hours to Los Angeles and around 11 hours to Tokyo.

Addressing a press conference here today, the airline's Senior Vice-President-Marketing, Brian Chou said, "India is an important market for us and we have high expectations from this market. With India, now on our destination chart, we are expecting, on an average a system-wide revenue contribution of $1.6 million. We offer not only one-stop service but fast connectivity to their destinations especially in the case of Vancouver, Los Angeles and Tokyo".

For the Delhi-Taipei sector, the airline will offer Indian meals served by Taj Air Caterers and for flights from Taipei to Delhi and the connecting destinations in the U.S., Japan, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Thailand and Australia, the airline has placed an Indian chef in Taipei to ensure same levels of quality.

According to the Country General Manager-India, Yung-Chun Li, "With our sales offices across India, we will be able to cater to the large Indian market. We have also partnered Air India for ground services and engineering support".

China Airlines has appointed Ascent Air as their exclusive general sales agent in India. Said, Pukhraj Chug, managing-Director, Ascent Air, "Our sales and distribution strategy will be customised to suit the needs of both, our agents and the traveller. We are looking at a load factor of close to 80 per cent in our first year of operation".

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