Air Canada drops direct India flights

14 March 2007

Montreal: Montreal-based Air Canada will end its regularly scheduled service to India on May 1, as a cost-cutting move. The airline's Toronto-New Delhi flight is currently the only nonstop flight between Canada and India.

Citing insufficient demand, an Air Canada spokesman said that the company has had problems filling seats during the summer months, which is typically the slow season, even as stiff competition in the winter drives down prices and impacts returns.

Air Canada currently flies the route every day.

Meanwhile, Air Canada announced that it would add a second daily flight to Beijing from Vancouver in early summer and increase the regularity of its Toronto-Shanghai route, for a total of five daily flights between the two countries. The company plans to divert the Boeing 767 jetliners currently servicing India to China.

According to the airline spokesman, the airline considers China to be a "very lucrative market" and foresees more business there than in India.

The decision to cut the direct flight to India has not gone down well with the Indo-Canadian business community, which has called it as "short-sighted" and "lousy." Canada-India Business Council members said Air Canada should be looking to the future, particularly with India's economy growing at an annual rate of 9 percent. In this regard they said that the airline should be adding flights to the subcontinent instead of killing them.