Air Canada returns to New Delhi effective November’15

In an unexpected announcement, Air Canada (IATA code AC) announced resumption of services to New Delhi (IATA code: DEL) beginning November’15. (Winter Schedule-2015). The flights will be operated by B787 Dreamliner aircraft, and the press release claims this will be the first route with the longer range B787-9, which will operate on two of three weekly services proposed by the airline.

The airline will operate this non-stop service four times a week,

Flight	From	To	Depart	Arrive	Days of the week
AC050	Toronto	Delhi	20:55	21:15 (+ 1 day)	Monday*, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday
AC051	Delhi	Toronto	00:45	05:00	Tuesday, Wednesday*,Thursday, Sunday

Departure from Toronto on Monday & from Delhi on Wednesday will be operated by B787-800.

Historic and current links to Canada

While Air India operated Amritsar – Delhi – Toronto flight, the same was pulled out owning to heavy losses in May’12. Air Canada also,in the past operated flights on the Toronto – Delhi sector. Both the airlines had flown this route with the B777 variants and Air Canada will benefit from the favorable economics of the B787 over the B777.

Currently only Jet Airways operates a flight to Toronto, via its hub at Brussels from Delhi, with connections from Mumbai.  With talks of Jet Airways shifting its hub from Brussels to Amsterdam or to Abu Dhabi, the future of flights to Toronto would be in question.

B787 – Dreamliner

The aircraft has its share of problems across the globe, including with Indian national carrier Air India. While Air India has two class configurations, Air Canada has configured its Dreamliner’s (B787-800 variant) in three class configurations with 20 Business, 21 Premium Economy and 210 Economy class seats. The Star Alliance member is yet to reveal the configurations of its longer B787-900 variant.  

While the B787-900 will have wingspan and fuselage same as those of the -800 variant, it is expected to be longer by 6 meters and higher Maximum Take Off Weight (MTOW), with a range of 15372km, compared to 14500km of the smaller B787-800 variant.

Delhi Hub & Connectivity

Not long ago, Star Alliance had made intentions clear about having a hub at Delhi along with Mumbai. Clearly the entry of Air India in Star Alliance is helping Delhi develop itself as a hub, along with attracting global traffic.

As per existing schedules of Air India, the inbound flight would connect to multiple destinations

Inbound
Connection Time	Destination
1 - 3 hours	Mumbai(AI), HongKong(AI), Bangkok(TG)
3 - 6 hours
6 - 9 hours	Ahmedabad(AI), Lucknow(AI), Pune(AI)
9+ hours	Khatmandu(AI), Hyderabad(AI), Chennai(AI), Kolkata(AI), Kochi(AI)

Outbound
Connection Time	Destination
1 - 3 hours	Chennai(AI), Mumbai(AI), Ahmedabad(AI), Kochi(AI), Kolkata(AI), Bangkok(TG)
3 - 6 hours	Singapore(SQ), Pune(AI), Hongkong(AI), Lucknow(AI)
6 - 9 hours
9+ hours

Re-timings would help Air Canada connect both ways to Singapore on Singapore Airlines, while it would already connect to Bangkok on Thai Airways – both Star Alliance members.

Concerns

While this new link is a welcome move, the traffic between Canada & India has remained stagnant for a while. The traffic patterns are mainly seasonal and there are ample options available via Europe, Middle East & the USA.

Resistance of Canadian government to grant more rights to Middle Eastern carriers and requirement of US visa for transit would benefit this non-stop service of Air Canada. 

Jet Airways shift to Full Service, how are the Jetlite flights being managed?

On 11^th August in a joint press conference with Etihad, Naresh Goyal, Chairman of Jet Airways announced the shift to a Full service model. Vistara, the yet to fly full service carrier, a joint venture of Singapore airlines & TATA group and Air India, after its entry into Star Alliance was considered tough competition in the full service space.

The mixed model

As Kingfisher Airlines bought Air Deccan to have presence in growing Low cost segment, Jet Airways bought Air Sahara, then a full service carrier and converted it to Jetlite, a low cost arm of the parent. All the CRJ-200s were retired, the airline pulled out of few sectors and others were converted to ATR flights, which were operated by Jet Airways. Later, a new segment came up, flights which would be called Jet Konnect, which was low cost offering of the mainline. Many aircraft saw decals of “Konnect”, over Jet Airways titles on the fuselage and these were to operate on Tier-II routes. However, as expected, the aircraft flew all across leading to confusion in minds of passengers.

Soon there were rotations, where flights went from Origin to Destination as Full service and returned as Low Cost, carrying food to be given out in the first leg and on return, the crew would sell on board!

First Blink

What options did one have on the service front?

• Aircraft – Jet Airways metal
• Business Class & Economy Class Full service
• Business Class & Economy Class – Buy on Board (BoB) in Konnect

•           Aircraft – Jetlite (Ex- Air Sahara aircraft)
•          Business Class & Economy Class – Buy on Board (BoB)Business

As this confusion started affecting the airline, first of many changes were made. This included having premium cabin being served complimentary food, across Jet Airways, Jet Airways Konnect & Jetlite.

The second change involved doing away with Jetlite and having two offerings, Jet Airways & Jet Airways Konnect. This also was confusing for the travelers, because the aircraft operating under Air Operators Permit (AOP) of Jetlite continue to have the light blue livery with Jetlite prominently written on the fuselage.

Just before the shift

Jet Airways was in news for planning to shift ATR fleet to Jetlite and also its plan to shift pilots creating road blocks, issues related to seniority and much more!

Thankfully, common sense prevailed and Jet Airways decided to make a move to Full service offering. The now defunct Kingfisher Airlines, had made a similar statement but it was too late in the survival cycle for them to invest, change and make the move. The airline shifted to what they called a holding pattern and later stopped operations, much before they could complete re-configuration of their aircraft and shift to a full service model.

Code share

With court cases, ruling out a merger between Jet & Jetlite, the airline resorted to code share, a common practice globally, but unique in this case since it is between the airline & its subsidiary. It involves each airline publish and market the flight under its own airline designator and flight number. Seat can be purchased on either of it but the flight is operated by only one, known as operating carrier.

The seat and revenue sharing could be done in multiple ways

•        Set number of seats are given by the operating airline to its code share partner and the partner airline maintains a separate inventory and sells it. The operating airline gets a fixed cost for sold/ unsold seats

•        No restriction on seats, where in both airlines open up all seats for sale. There could well be a cap on maximum seats sold under this arrangement

Code share between Jet Airways & Jetlite did have issues for the passengers, since until recently the passengers booked on 9W code with operating carrier being Jetlite were not able to do a web check-in!

Move to Full service

The move to full service on 1^st December was a silent affair. An email to frequent fliers, statement on social media and the website jetkonnect.com directing users to jetairways.com was all that happened, along with meals being served on all flights, irrespective of which aircraft the flight was being flown on – Jet airways Boeing, Jetlite boeing or Jet Airways ATR.

However, due to legal disputes, the Jetlite AOP (S2 code) continues to be in operation and there are 4 x B737-700, 5 x B737-800 and 1 x B737-900 which are part of Jetlite AOP and remain in operation. Amongst them, they operate 564 flights a week. As part of this move to full service, the passenger would get complimentary food in these flights, but how is Jet Airways managing the Flight numbers, Inventory and trying to be seen as one airline ?

Complex or Simple – Code share to the rescue

Prima Facie, this is how Jet Airways seems to be managing the move. The airline had said it will throw more light on this before the move, but hardly did it give out the details of the move. The answer to how Jet Airways is managing two Air Operating Permits lies in Code Share.

Readers would recollect how an online booking engine would show flights under 9W code (9W 7xxx) and S2 code when they would search for flights on some sectors where both were operating (Eg: Mumbai – Bhopal – Mumbai or Delhi – Chandigarh – Delhi). The flight times would be same, but there would be marginal fare difference owing to how code share is handled).

After the move on 1^st December, entire inventory will be managed by Jet airways code (9W 7xxx) and inventory for S2 code, the original flight number will be zeroed out. For operational reasons, the flight plan, ATC, would continue to consider the Jetlite aircraft as an aircraft operating with S2 code and S2 flight number.

A random search on online travel portals reflects these changes and now you can see only one entry for a particular flight, unlike two in the past.

Way forward

The airline has effectively used Code Share as a tool to make this one brand strategy work. However, the livery remains different for the Jetlite aircraft. They would either be moved (sub leased / leased / sold) to Jet Airways, like it happened with VT-JLJ, a B737-900 with Jetlite and now with Jet Airways or just see a chance in livery from existing light blue to mainline colors to further reduce confusion.

But in a country obsessed with food – the first cut has been made. “Jahaj kaunsa bhi honedo, khana jarur milega jee” (Let there be any aircraft, you will certainly get food)