bmi Extends Network to Amritsar

bmi British Midland International is to inaugurate a three times weekly link to the Indian city of Amritsar from October 13. The UK carrier has confirmed that it will extend its existing flight between London and Almaty to the historic city, home to the Sikh shrine Harminder Sahib, better known as the Golden Temple.

“Amritsar is one of the most ancient and fascinating cities of India, and is also the spiritual and cultural centre of the Sikh religion,” said Joerg Hennemann, Chief Commercial Officer, bmi. “We are delighted that our customers now have the chance to discover this vibrant city with convenient schedules and a direct service from London. This announcement builds on our network strategy to focus on international routes, whilst still providing key domestic connectivity to London Heathrow.”

Although this will be bmi’s only current Indian destination, it has previously served the country with direct links to Mumbai in the past. The airline plans to use an Airbus A330 configured with 36 Business Class and 196 Economy seats on the route, meaning some minor tweaking to its existing schedule. The London – Almaty route is currently flown by a Boeing 757, so to provide capacity for the upgrade bmi will switch the A330 currently flying three times weekly to Bishkek and will instead serve the Kyrgyzstan capital with a smaller A320 via Baku.

An estimated 2.64 million O&D passengers travelled between India and the UK in the past year with around 137,000 beginning or ending their journey in Amritsar. There is a large Indian community from the Punjab region in the UK so the new route will be popular with passengers travelling for business, tourism and VFR reasons.

Although Indian carrier Jet Airways has previously operated direct flights between London and Amritsar and Mahan Airlines between Birmingham and Amritsar, there are no current direct flights to the Indian city. The majority of passengers fly via other Indian cities or Middle East or CIS hubs. As the table below shows, there are more than 100 scheduled flights a week between the UK and India, all operating from London Heathrow.

The large amount of traffic between the UK and India transferring via the Middle East is clearly visible when you look at the O&D traffic between the two countries. Dubai-based Emirates Airline actually dominates the market with a 25.3 per cent share thanks in part to its strong regional airport network in the UK. Other major operators between the two countries are Jet Airways (15.4 per cent), Air India (14.5 per cent) and British Airways (13.0 per cent), all of which offer direct flights.

Away from India, bmi is to also increase the frequency of its flights between London Heathrow and Marrakech from three to five a week this winter. The airline says that in response to customer demand it will add new Thursday and Sunday flights to the initial schedule it launched earlier this year. The increase in capacity will take place from October 1 and will continue through to April 14, 2012.

bmi is the only airline to offer flights between London Heathrow and Marrakech, although British Airways, easyJet and Royal Air Maroc offer flights to the Moroccan city from London Gatwick, and Ryanair has flights from London Luton and London Stansted. An estimated 308,000 O&D passengers flew between these London airports and Marrakech in the past year.

easyJet currently dominates the market with a 51.0 per cent share of the traffic, followed by RAM 23.9 per cent and Ryanair with 21.1 per cent. bmi only launched its flights on the route in April, and according to provisional CAA data it carried 2,870 and 2,258 passengers during its first two months of operation.