Often called an Indian airline, Dubai-based Emirates picks up a large chunk of the almost five million passengers it flies annually from non-metro Indian cities, recording load factors as high as over 90 per cent.
The Gulf carrier, which flew 4.86 million passengers in 2013-14 on its 185 weekly flights out of ten Indian cities, recorded an average of 81 per cent load factor or an average percentage of passengers carried in a flight.
"The load factor is in the high 90s (percentage) range from non-hub airports in India where we operate 63 per cent of all our flights," Emirates' Vice President (India-Nepal) Essa Sulaiman Ahmad told reporters here today.
The airline's load factors on the India routes ranged from 91 per cent in Hyderabad, 90 per cent from Chennai, Kochi and Kozhikode to the lowest of 79 per cent from Kolkata and Delhi at 87 per cent.
Asked whether he agreed with the description of Emirates as an Indian carrier, Ahmad said the airline was third largest after Air India and Jet Airways in picking up international traffic from India to foreign destinations including to its Dubai hub, with a market share of 10.8 per cent.
To questions on the tough competition it posed to Indian carriers, he said almost 92 per cent of 4.86 million passengers Emirates flew out of and in to India travelled from Dubai or points on its global network that "are not currently served by Indian carriers".
He gave examples of almost all destinations in Africa and several in North America and Europe where Indian airlines did not operate.
He parried questions on whether there was a "threat" from Air India joining Star Alliance, saying "competition always makes one stronger".
