NEW DELHI, February 22: New Delhi is scheduled to hold talks with Bonn on airlines in the second week of April. The negotiations were earlier scheduled for January but had to be postponed due to general elections, as reported earlier briefly.German carrier Lufthansa is hoping that the union government will permit the airline to increase its frequencies from the current 14 to 21 services.Executive vice president (sales) of Lufthansa German Airlines Stefan Pichler said that "restrictions on air traffic growth can adversely effect economic growth of a country".
He said that Germany was the second-largest trading partner of India and growth in air traffic will assist this relationship.
"Lufthansa believes strongly in the economic dynamism of India, with its good business infrastructure" he added. Senior executives of the airline stressed the point that there was a lack of airline seats on the routes from India to Europe, Pichler added.
Lufthansa recorded a seat load factor of 75 per cent in 1997 onflights between India and Germany. During peak season, the seat factor jumped to over 90 per cent. "We have to turn down customers at such times" said Pichler.
Interestingly, India comes second only to Japan in terms of traffic revenue generated by Lufthansa in the Asia-Pacific region. While the Japanese market accounted for 24.5 per cent of revenue, India accounted for 14.9 per cent of the Asia-Pacific traffic revenue.
"Aviation is no longer an airline to airline game. Competition in future will be between airline networks and not between airlines" saidPichler.
Copyright © 1998 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.
