whywhyzee wrote:I think the trick is, India is the next big boom country. Economically. They are emerging and doing so rapidly, and it is reflected in airport passenger numbers. Going large is betting on this to continue, its high risk-high reward. If they get it right and growth continues at this breakneck pace, having larger widebodies puts them at a significant competitive advantage, buoy course, there is a massive element of risk that it flops and they lose a ton of money. At very least, they will have th assets worth something to other carriers.
Jet Airways bet big and the 777-300ER was simply too much plane for what they wanted to do.
Indian airlines are at a long haul disadvantage due to geography including the time of day flights leave India to work around curfews in Europe. There's no one central airport in India for a long haul hub. BOM and DEL have significant traffic. They both can support nonstop service to LHR, CDG, AMS, FRA, IST, JFK, NRT, ICN, HKG, PEK, PVG, SYD on O/D alone. There's demand to BHX, MAN, LIS, MAD, MUC, VIE, FCO, MXP, KIX, NGO, MEL, ORD, LAX, etc as well but not enough O/D without feed. Those destinations are going to need connecting traffic, but people aren't going to want to back track or switch do domestic to international transfers at many airports since it doesn't work well in India.
Traditionally an international to domestic connection was a nightmare. Long haul flights are timed for night time arrivals and departures to allow for daytime arrivals in Europe and Asia. There isn't great domestic feed at those times of the day. Today things are better with new terminals at BOM and DEL that don't make passengers switch terminals, but there still isn't full night time feed. Airlines like EK, LH, SQ, etc bring people to their hubs and then connect passengers to their entire network. EK and SQ have such a vast network in India connecting to a far bigger international network that the can connect people far better than an Indian based airline can.
I think Spicejet could challenge the old model and schedule all their departures around Indian based travelers preferences. For example they can cater to Indian's body clocks and have a noon departure to FRA. The plane can arrive at 6pm and then return at 8pm for a more normal 7am arrival in BOM/BLR/DEL etc. This is how US airlines schedule their flights to Asia. They then have full connections to the India network and don't care about connections in FRA/CDG/AMS/LHR/etc. Although a few people do, I think the vast majority of people don't like a 2am departure. This would probably work best with smaller planes. So far this strategy is only being used on LHR flights by Jet Airways and Air India. Rather than trying to play the losing game of flying big planes to get CASM under that of EK, I think they should get creative and do something unique. 787s would be better for that than 777s or A350s.