Mauritius’ national carrier, Air Mauritius, is planning to increase its flight frequency out of Chennai and Bangalore because of the growing number of Indians visiting the island, according to a senior official on Wednesday.

“We may increase the flight frequency from Chennai and Bangalore possibly from next May onwards from the current once a week,” Vinith G, manager-India and South Asian Sub-Continent, told IANS.

Even though Hyderabad and Kolkata offer good potential, the traffic load is not sufficient to fill up the Mauritian airline’s A330 aircraft, according to Vinith.

With the 461 million euro-revenue, Air Mauritius connects Mauritius with Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai.

“On their return journey, people go to Dubai first. From Dubai they come back to India,” Vinith said by agreeing that Air Mauritius enjoys monopoly in direct flights to the island.

According to him, the Dubai-based Emirates represent competition for Air Mauritius as the airline carries Indians back home.

In addition, he mentioned that the annual load factor for Air Mauritius out of India is around 82 percent and that the corporate travellers flying on their company’s expenses make use of the 24-business class seats.

“Indians fly economy class when they bear the flight cost and business class on official trips,” he said.

Vinith stated that the belly cargo space is also utilised fully as it has a capacity of around 12 tonnes and the cargo space gets filled with perishables, textiles, medicines and others items.

Air India and Air Mauritius cooperate in the form of a soft block of 16 seats on all the flights between Mauritius and India.

According to the annual report, Air India and Air Mauritius are currently working to enhance the present cooperation by developing into a free flow codeshare, and its scope will cover domestic codeshare in India.

“Air Mauritius and Air India have already started the groundwork to initiate the approval process for Air Mauritius to obtain domestic codeshare rights in India,” the annual report of Air Mauritius outlined.

On another note, the Mauritius Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) conducted a road show in Chennai on Wednesday in order to promote tourism in Mauritius.

There were over 100 people, including city-based international tour organisers who participated at the event.

The road show was an excellent opportunity for tourism stakeholders from Mauritius to network with Indian travel and tour providers and gave a preview on new and existing products, according to Vijay Anand, country manager of MTPA.

Image: flyawaysimulation

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