India-China direct flights are set to soar again, but conditions apply

In early February 2020, when the world was still debating the Wuhan flu, Indian airlines operated their last direct flights to China. Soon, the world would come to a stop, and the only flights between India and China were Air India’s rescue missions for Indians in Wuhan.

A file photo of Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and Chinese President Xi Jinping.(PTI)

What started as a precautionary measure, later became a geopolitical impasse, when the Indian Army and People’s Liberation Army of China in Galwan, Ladakh.

But even as the prime minister mentioned “three” nations supporting Pakistan in the aftermath of Operation Sindoor earlier this year, there’s fresh bonhomie brewing between India and China after Washington imposed additional tariffs on New Delhi. That raises the spectre of a faster resumption of civil aviation ties—though there’s no progress on the ground (or in the air).

A resumption in India-China direct flights would bring a huge respite to traders who frequent China but via Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Hong Kong or Singapore. That’s also good news for Indian airlines, who stand to benefit from the huge cargo potential between the two countries.

Aviation, Then & Now

India’s aviation industry has seen a sea change since the last Air China flight landed in Delhi (or Mumbai) in January 2020. Chinese carriers operated 42 direct flights every week, including Air China flying from Beijing to Mumbai four times a week and five times to Delhi.

China Southern Airlines operated twice daily service to Guangzhou from Delhi. China Eastern Airlines operated eight flights a week, including a daily Delhi-Shanghai flight. Shandong Airlines flew four times a week to Delhi from Kunming. RwandAir operated three flights a week between Mumbai and Guangzhou.

Among Indian carriers, Air India—then still government-owned—flew to Shanghai five times a week from New Delhi, while IndiGo operated daily flights between Chengdu-Delhi and Guangzhou-Kolkata, according to data shared by Cirium, an aviation analytics company.

IndiGo had announced a Mumbai-Chengdu daily flight from mid-March of 2020, but that never happened. Parent company InterGlobe Aviation Ltd. was eyeing major investments in China, including its first international call center in Guangzhou with six employees to handle customer queries in Cantonese, Mandarin and English.

Times have changed.

At the end of December 2019, IndiGo had a fleet of around 250 planes. That’s now 400. Air India is now a Tata Group company. SpiceJet, which was looking to expand rapidly, has a market share of a little over 2%.

While Air India would want a larger pound of the Chinese market now, IndiGo’s focus is on the hub-and-spoke model than what it was back in 2019. Then, there’s Akasa Air.

To be sure, it’s still unclear what the thaw in India-China ties would mean for civil aviation—will it be a big-bang reinstatement or a gradual scale-up?

Globally, airline networks have changed drastically since we started flying again after the covid pandemic ebbed. Airlines have not resumed flights on routes they operated on pre-pandemic, but have returned to those destinations from different points. IndiGo, for example, resumed flights to Hong Kong but from Delhi instead of Bengaluru.

There may be a battle for the remainder of the rights on the Indian side with SpiceJet holding a few and Akasa Air, which did not exist in 2020, wanting to expand.

In Conclusion

To be sure, Indian airlines’ expansion into China has always been in fits and starts.

Jet Airways expanded to Shanghai with flights going onwards towards San Francisco, but were quickly withdrawn due to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008-09. SpiceJet launched flights to Guangzhou from Delhi in late 2013, only to pull them out in 2014 due to financial troubles. The next set of expansions came by the end of 2019, which ended with the pandemic.

There have been talks of renegotiating and expanding the bilateral air service agreement between India and China. Currently capped by frequencies, it favours Chinese carriers as they deploy the widebody aircraft in most cases. Will it be converted to seats? In that case, Indian carriers with narrowbody operations can add more frequencies and expand better.