qatar: To create our air pockets like Qatar

Qatar and Etihad have become an unstoppable force in the global aviation industry much because of the location of their home bases in the Gulf. Their geographical positioning allows them to transfer big chunks of passengers between Asia, Africa and Europe. These are also state-owned carriers of energy-producing countries, which makes them ferocious price warriors in transcontinental travel. The energy bonanza has helped build impressive tourism infrastructure around transit hubs in Dubai, Doha and Abu Dhabi to keep air traffic flowing through the Gulf. These airlines have clawed market shares from European and Asian carriers by offering class-leading hospitality.

The Gulf carriers are now competing among themselves. Qatar itself has made much of its infrastructural and branding upgrade after hosting the very successful Fifa World Cup in 2022, wresting much glitter from its rival airline-countries. These advantages are critical, but not enough to offset the essential disadvantage they face: traffic does not originate in West Asia. Asia is where the airline business is booming, and within that, the Indian aviation market is poised for blistering growth. It is also emerging from an extended phase of under-capitalisation with ambitions of creating its own airline transit hub.

As a first step, Indian airlines need to compensate for the high cost of jet fuel at home by flying to destinations where they can refuel aircraft cheaply. They will have to match Gulf carriers in offering services to the well-heeled traveller to Europe and America. This will sustain their extremely low margin domestic operations. Indian ‘home bases’, like Qatar for Qatar Airways, will have to draw (real, not notional) business and first-class passengers, and create ancillary industries to compete against established transit hubs like Dubai and Singapore. A ‘KolkatAir‘, for instance, with the right incentives and fuel economics, could well serve the eastern hinterland that gets a woefully low amount of traffic to become the gateway to, and from, East Asia.