AirAsia to use Bangalore as its India hub?

by Devesh Agarwal

AirAsia is close to signing an agreement to use Bangalore as its hub for India operations, Bhaskar Bodapati, Senior Director of the Bengaluru Airport International Limited (BIAL) revealed in Saturday's Deccan Herald.

This will be a coup for the company, especially after the loss of the financially defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

Historically, Bangalore has been ignored by India's domestic airlines for their international operations, who chose to go to Chennai, thus leaving the field wide open for foreign carriers like Emirates, Lufthansa, Singapore Airlines, and Air France from the HAL airport days, and DragonAir, Qatar Airways, Etihad and others since 2008 when the new international airport opened.

Air India operates just one flight to Dubai, via Goa, and SpiceJet has just commenced a flight to Bangkok from the city. Jet Airways briefly operated a flight to Brussels which is its scissor hub for flights on to the east coast of north America, but it was shut within months.

Both BIAL and AirAsia have not commented on this story.