Japan's ANA plans to make India a gateway to US

After the Middle East and South East Asian airlines it is now Japan's All Nippon Airways, which has declared its ambitions of becoming the next gateway carrier for India, aiming to scoop up the US-bound passenger and take them to their destination via its transit hub in Tokyo.

In the near future, All Nippon Airways (ANA) not only plans to add a couple of more Indian cities to its network but also quadruple capacity to Mumbai, where it has daily flights.

"Without India market we can not survive. Our location is very good for connections as from Narita airport in Tokyo it takes only two hours to reach the US west coast. Also, we would take lesser time than Gulf carriers to fly to the US," All Nippon Airways General Manager (India) Kenji Sugino told ET.

A gateway carrier picks up traffic from other countries and routes it through their hubs. For example, Emirates flies people via the Dubai airport, Singapore Airlines takes Indian passengers to the western countries via the Changi airport in Singapore, Qatar routes fliers through Doha, Etihad through Abu Dhabi and Cathay Pacific through Hong Kong.

Experts say ANA's moves could up the ante in the war to capture the growing number of Indian transit passengers.

"Majority of Indian nationals travelling to the west coast (US and Canada) prefer to go via the Pacific (Malaysia, Singapore and Hong Kong). So, ANA's plans could give a few sleepless nights to Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines, JAL, Thai Airways, Malaysia Airlines," independent aviation expert Rajan Mehra said.

In comparison, Gulf carriers focus on transatlantic cities like New York, Chicago, and Boston in the US and Toronto, Montreal in Canada.

"Indians travelling to the US, Canada is roughly 10% of total Indian outbound travellers. I think it is a very competitive route with a number of carriers already plying to key cities so ANA will have to get their routing, pricing and positioning absolutely bang-on to make a success of it," said Sharat Dhall, COO of Yatra.com.

Apart from the daily flights from Delhi and Mumbai to Tokyo, the carrier plans to fly to Chennai and Bangalore in the near future four times and thrice a week, respectively.

ANA, which commenced daily Delhi-Tokyo flights from October 2012, was planning to fly Boeing 787 or Dreamliner aircraft on the Mumbai route, increasing capacity on it by four times.

"However, the sudden grounding of the B-787s world over has delayed that plan for sometime and we are unable to go ahead with expansion as planned," Sugino said.

When asked if reports about ANA planning to buy into a low-cost Indian carrier were true, Sugino said that there is no such plan as of now, especially in the face of B-787 grounding. There have been reports that ANA and Japan Airlines have been scouting the market for Indian partners.