SPECIAL DOSSIER:
SPECIAL DOSSIER: MALDIVES 45 Destination Paradise Maldives air transport is growing More flights, more destinations. The Maldives have never been so easily accessible, particularly out of Asia and the Middle East. According to data from Innovata (www. flightmapsanalytics.com) for this coming April, Malé international Airport is linked to the world by 29 airlines to 43 destinations including 33 international ones. The most connected country to the Maldives is China with 12 destinations (including Hong Kong). National carrier Maldivian Airlines has been flying to China – seen as an inbound market with the most potential to growth. The airline has been flying to China with Airbus aircraft. The Airbus A320 was delivered to Maldivian Airlines back to October 2012 and was followed by the delivery of an Airbus A321 in January 2015. However, both aircraft cannot serve China with non-stop services out of Malé and have to make a stopover. The stop was originally done in Dhaka but since the end of 2014, all the flights to China make a stop in Bangkok. Malé is now linked to Bangkok by six weekly non-stop services from Maldivian Airlines with flights going further to Chongqing (twice a week) as well as Changsha, Nanjing, Xian and Wuhan (each with one weekly service). Five other China-based carriers (Beijing Capital Airlines, Cathay Pacific, China Eastern, China Southern and Shanghai Airlines) link seven Chinese cities as well as Hong Kong to the Maldives. With over 72,000 available seats per month (base April), Maldivian Airlines remains the largest airline in terms of capacity representing a quarter of all the offered seats. The second largest carrier is Emirates with 15% of all capacities followed by Sri Lankan Group (Sri Lankan Airlines and its low cost affiliate Mihin Lanka) with slightly over 10% of all seats. Sri Lankan is likely to gain market share following a recent agreement for code share services with Oman Air. The Muscat-based carrier will stop serving directly the Maldives from the end of March and code share instead with Sri Lankan. Oman Air’s departure will however be compensated by the arrival of Saudia. From the end of March, the Skyteam member will propose twice weekly operations on Jeddah-Malé-Colombo using a 341-seater Boeing 777-200ER aircraft. For a long time, Maldivian governments had only allowed services from legacy carriers as the country wanted to maintain its exclusive appeal. Today however, the government understands that low cost carriers are an inseparable element of a successful tourism policy. Six low cost carriers serve now the Maldives representing 8.5% of all seats capacity to and from Malé. FlyDubai is the largest low cost carrier representing 45% of the total seats offered by budget airlines. From Europe, the most convenient connections are offered via Istanbul with Turkish Airlines or via Middle East carriers, particularly Emirates and Qatar Airways. Emirates offers over 44,000 seats per month on sale, followed by Qatar with close to 12,000 seats and Turkish Airlines with 9,000 seats (Data for April 2016). Rapid development of traffic on the route Malé- China and the increase in flights’ frequency to the Middle East and Southeast Asia have a positive consequence: Malé Airport is recognized as one of the fastest growing airports of the Indian Sub-continent. Over the last five years, Ibrahim Nasir International Airport saw total capacity increasing by 56.4% just after Hyderabad, Pune and Lucknow in India. If Indian airports are excluded, Malé can proudly claim to be the fastest growing airport in South Asia. Ibrahim Nasir International Airport, Malé, Maldives © Trans Maldivian Airways AIRLINES MARKET SHARE AT MALÉ IBRAHIM NASIR INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT IN APRIL 2016 (%) TOP ROUTES TO MALÉ IN TOTAL SEATS CAPACITY IN APRIL 2016 30,4% Others 24,5% Maldivian Air Colombo 21,1% 5,7% SIA 6% Turkish Airlines 7,9% Mega Maldives Airlines 15,3% Emirates 10,2% Sri Lankan Group Dubai Singapore Doha Bangkok 13,7% 6,7% 4% 3,3% 0 5,5 11 16,5 22 Source: Flightmapsanalytics.com 04/16 Source: Flightmapsanalytics.com 04/16 ITB BERLIN NEWS • Wednesday 9 th March 2016
