The Hindu : British Airways keen on operating from Bangalore

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Saturday, Apr 26, 2003

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British Airways keen on operating from Bangalore

By Our Special Correspondent

Bangalore April 25. British Airways has shown interest in operating two weekly services in the Bangalore-London-Bangalore sector considering the traffic potential.

British Airways officials, David Richardson, General Manager, International Relations, and Andy Stern, General Manager, South Asia, who are in the city, have met the Karnataka Chief Minister, S.M.Krishna, seeking his good offices in introducing the service.

On Friday, they met the Minister of State for Information Technology, D.B. Inamdar, and impressed on him the need for the State to take up the matter with the Centre.

They told presspersons after the meeting with Mr. Inamdar that the infrastructure at the airport here was adequate to operate the service. The Bangalore airport could handle the bigger Boeing 777 aircraft they had planned to introduce in their fleet. The Chief Minister had welcomed their move.

They noted that British Airways was the first foreign airline company to operate services from South India to Europe. It introduced two services between Chennai and London in 1988. They were now considering the introduction of four flights a week in the Chennai-London-Chennai sector. They were operating daily services between Mumbai and London and New Delhi and London and to the reverse destinations too. The frequency of operations between Kolkata and London was twice a week. They were keen on operating more number of services from South India.

Mr. Richardson also spoke of some of the "long-term problems'' they faced in India regarding increasing their services. Britain too had to allow Air India to operate more number of services to London. But they were faced with the problem of congestion at London's Heathrow Airport.

Alok Sawhney, Country Commercial Manager, India, spoke.

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