Business class

Business class takes wing for most foreign airlines

With recession receding, more international airlines are pulling out economy class seats and replacing them with business class seats. For the Indian sector, international airlines have increased business class seats by 30 per cent over the last few months.

German carrier Lufthansa Group's focus is on increasing route capacity and also per-flight capacity, Mr Axis Hilgers, Lufthansa's South Asia Director, told Business Line. Accordingly, the airline's current configuration for its Boeing 747 aircraft is: 16 first class, 80 business class, and 234 economy seats. Thirty-six economy seats have made way for the additional 12 business class seats, he added. Similarly, on its A330 and A340 aircraft, 32 economy seats have given way for 12 business class seats.

The airline currently flies to seven destinations in India; while it uses the Boeing 747 aircraft for its Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore routes, it flies Airbus A330 and A340 aircraft to other destinations.

“There is a massive improvement in demand for business class seats. In fact, the business class occupancy has moved up more than anticipated,” said Mr Jean-Philippe Benoit, General Manager, Swiss International Airlines. Swiss Air introduced a new first class on its services when it introduced the latest version of A330 aircraft last year. Eight new first class seats were added, while two-metre-long lie-flat beds were introduced for the business class.

Singapore Airlines too plans to “retro-fit” its flights to Bangalore and Chennai soon. Mr Jooleng Teo, State Manager – Karnataka, Singapore Airlines, said recently that as part of the airline's cabin enhancement programme, flights to these cities would have a “more luxurious, comfortable and new-look business class” in the next couple of months. These improved business-class seats would be introduced by reducing the per-flight capacity of these services.

Seats upgradation

Though not all airlines have gone in for reconfiguration, some like Dragonair have gone in for an upgradation for their business and economy-class seats. “System wide, we are progressively upgrading our business and economy-class seats in order to suit the needs of the traveller.

We have the new seats on all flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Hong Kong,” said Mr Tom Wright, General Manager - India, Middle East, Africa and Pakistan, Hong Kong - Dragonair. “We did not reconfigure our seats to accommodate more economy seats during the downturn last year. What we did is, we offered attractive fares in business class in order to induce travel in the front-end of the cabin,” he added.

Air traffic surges

According to the latest report from the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, traffic data for February 2010 showed international scheduled air traffic rose 9.5 per cent year-on-year (though 1.4 per cent below pre-crisis levels). IATA's Director- General and CEO, Mr Giovanni Bisignani, said in the report, “We are moving in the right direction — in two to three months, the industry should be back to pre-recession traffic levels”. The highlight for February, according to IATA, was improved load factors which stood at 75.5 per cent.

As Mr Benoit of Swiss Air pointed out, load factors have been “two digits higher than last year. We are seeing higher loads and better yields”. If these are any indication, happy times are indeed back again for international carriers.