Very robust demand in India for United

With robust demand for its product, American carrier United Airlines that has been present in India for 18 years is keen to ramp up capacity in India, but hampered by the closure of Russian airspace due to Russia-Ukraine war. Harvinder Singh, Director, Middle East & India, of United says the airline is aiming to launch five flights to India at the earliest.

- Ranvir Nayar

Q Let's start with the Indian market for United and where it is today?

India is a very, very important market for United. We have been in India since 2005. The situation with Ukraine and resulting in the restriction of the usage of Russian airspace has kind of constricted us to one flight in Newark. But the plan was to have five flights a day, but due to the war we had to pause four flights.

But we were always looking for the opportunity to grow more. And that's the reason we just announced a second flight from Delhi to Newark, which is kind of complementing the service.

So if you're not able to go to India, but basically it is the United network and for example, if you look at Transatlantic flights and compare that with 2019, we are 32 pc up for Transatlantic and similarly for Trans-Pacific.

Right from day one since the pandemic is over, we have seen a huge robust demand from India. And we are very happy with the way things are going. And that is one of the reasons also we wanted to put a second flight, which actually is a testimony as it underpins the importance of the market.