British Airways expects its new segment of customers in India – students and SMEs – to bring in robust growth and help improve load factor on its flights in the near term.
The premium full-service airline has been witnessing spurt in number of student travelers and people from small and medium enterprises on its flights in the recent times.
“We have executive club programme covering wide range of people, students proposition for growing number of them India, ‘On Business’ scheme for SMEs as also corporate relationship programmes. But, we have been seeing growth in students and SME travelers,” Moran Birger, Regional Commercial Manager – South Asia, British Airways told The Hindu group of publications.
“We have student promotion schemes as their population is pretty big in India. Under such promotional scheme, we offer an additional piece of luggage to all student travelers who fly to UK or US for studies. We have been seeing an upward trend in terms of student customers to destinations in UK and US,” he added.
Also, the airline doesn’t restrict the weight of the cabin baggage. As long as the luggage fits the dimensions prescribed, they can add more weight.
British Airways is also bullish on SME segment from India and hopes this segment to continue to fetch good number of travelers as lot of SMEs in the country have global ambitions and aim to garner business from outside the country.
“Generally, there has been a significant growth in the SME segment. Our ‘On Business’ programme for this segment of customers enables them collect points as they travel and they can avail discounts at the time of booking,” said Mr.Birger adding, “with our tie-ups with US-based airlines, we cover hundreds of destinations in the US.”
The airlines, which operates 47 flights a week from London to five Indian cities – New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad, is gearing up to launch new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner, which has a new First Class cabin, on Delhi-London route from October 25. This will be the first route globally where BA will be introducing the new aircraft.
