Oct 19, 2010 ~ Amritsar: Amritsar Vikas Manch has contradicted Air India’s claim that with the new schedule of Amritsar-London-Toronto flight from 31 October 2010, passengers will get daily connectivity to London and Toronto and will also save on time. In a memorandum addressed to UPA Chairperson Mrs. Sonia Gandhi, Prime Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh and Union Minister for Civil Aviation Mr. Praful Patel, Amritsar Vikas Manch Patron Dr. Charanjit Singh Gumtala has stated that according to statistics, Amritsar-London-Toronto is one of the most profit making routes served by Air India and by switching it through from 31 October, cargo business from Amritsar will be adversely affected as well because AI had earlier pressed into service a Boeing 777 on this route with a perishable cargo capacity of 24 tonnes and an almost equal capacity for the non-perishable cargo.
Data for the past 4 years shows that Air India has been discontinuing its hub-and- spoke flight that connects Amritsar to New York ,London ,Chicago, Singapore and other places from15 Dec to31 January owing to fog,but Amritsar-London- Toronto flight operates through out the year as it originates from Amritsar and its time is altered according to Amritsar season. So new route will not be in the interest of Punjabis nor of Air India itself.
According to the new Air India schedule ASR-DELHI-TORONTO flight AI187 take off from Rajasansi at 2210 hrs (IST). Passengers will have to travel to Delhi on a small A321 plane that can accommodate only 150 passengers. Currently Air India’s B777 taking off directly from Amritsar can accommodate 300 passengers. The new arrangement will thus reduce the effective seat capacity to half. Passengers for New York, Chicago, Singapore, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Shanghai and other places will also have to go to Delhi from Amritsar in this AI 187. This means that if AI 187 flight is fully booked, passengers will have to take the earlier flight at 3pm or 11am and wait at Delhi for more than9 hours to connect to other destinations. It is obvious that they will prefer some other airline. Air India will lose passengers.
Besides, Air India’s claim that with the new schedule passengers will get daily connectivity to London and also save on time is also not understandable. Currently passengers fly directly to London but in the new schedule, they will have to fly an hour to Delhi and then wait one and half hour at Delhi making it an extra time of two and half hours. So it will cause hardship to them. Similarly Toronto passengers have to go to Delhi instead of London. So it makes no difference to them.
The success of the Amritsar-London-Toronto flight lies only in the fact that it originates from Amritsar. Diverting it via New Delhi will not only cause avoidable hardships to a majority of the air passengers but will be tantamount to surrendering a large chunk of the passenger cake to private airlines and invite recurring additions to its Rs. 7200 Crore losses for 2009-10 alone as happened to its Mumbai –New York flight which created a record loss of Rs 750 crore for want of passengers. So this would be suicidal for the cash strapped Air India. Earlier Amritsar -London-Toronto flight was operated 7 days a week with great success but to provide more business to Delhi, the weekly frequency of flights from Amritsar was reduced to four. Earlier Air India was running Amritsar- Birmingham- Toronto but it changed the route to London. Mahan Airline came to fill the gap and it runs Amritsar-Tehran-Birmingham daily lapping up the profits surrendered by Air India.
Copy of the letter has been sent to Dr. Manohar Singh Gill, Minister for Youth Affairs & Sports, Mrs Parneet Kaur, Union Minister of State for External Affairs, Mrs.Ambika Soni, Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, S.Navjot Singh Sidhu, M.P… Dr Rattan Singh Ajnala, MP. S. Kahan Singh Pannu, Deputy Commissioner, Amritsar.
