With China traffic muted, India major market for SFO: Kevin Bumen, ET Infra

NEW DELHI: On October 27, Air India announced that it will deploy its newly inducted Boeing 777 wide-body aircraft to all three US destinations it serves non-stop from Mumbai to New York JFK Airport, Newark Liberty Airport, and San Francisco. The move highlights the importance of the US market for the Tata Sons-promoted airline and the increasing demand for direct non-stop flights between India and US.

While connectivity to New York area airports have been well established, in the last few years, demand for flight services to San Francisco International Airport located on the US West Coast have increased.

Kevin Bumen, Chief Financial and Commercial Officer at San Francisco International Airport, who was on a visit to Mumbai recently, in an interaction with ET Infra outlined that notwithstanding the closure of Russian airspace for US airlines, demand for flight services between India and US has increased post covid.

“Air India began operations in San Francisco in 2015 and it has been growing steadily. They were really our only carrier to grow during covid. They are our first international carrier, beyond Canada or Mexico, but our first overseas airline to fully recover pre-covid levels of traffic and have plans for growth beyond,” said Bumen.

With regard to growth, Bumen highlighted that in the first six months of 2023, passenger traffic from India recorded 186% growth as compared to the same period in 2019.

According to aviation research and consultancy firm CAPA India, the South Asian country was the only one of the top 10 source markets for the US that had recovered to pre-pandemic volumes in the first nine months of 2023.

The passenger traffic from the world’s fifth largest economy and most populous country is of crucial importance to US airports such as SFO at a time when traffic from China has taken a hit due to geopolitical tensions.

“At SFO, we have seen, certainly, a strong international recovery. During July of this year, we peaked at 97% of our international traffic recovered and that’s without a lot of China flying. So we are looking forward to 2024 as a year where we, you know, move really from recovery mode into growth mode and India is one of those exciting markets when we think about growth because of things like new airports as well as Air India has ambitious plans for growth and we see a lot of potential,” said Bumen.

Talking about new airports, Bumen highlighted that the operationalisation of the Navi Mumbai International will give significant capacity lift in the Mumbai region.

While Bumen outlined that it is too soon to tell how US-India connectivity will pan out from the Navi Mumbai International Airport, the topic has been discussed and deliberated at SFO.

“… it is something we will be looking at closely. It is exciting to see, it is a significant increase in potential capacity,” he added.

While flight services from Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru will continue to be the focus of major US airports and airlines, Bumen outlined that cities such as Hyderabad and Chennai present very compelling business cases as well for future services.