30 minute interview

‘Airlines cannot sideline the travel agent’

James Barrington Director Marketing and Sales, Cathay Pacific

James Barrington, director marketing and sales, Cathay Pacific, is not resting on his laurels on winning the best airline (awarded by Air Transport World), but is keen to enhance his airline's relationship with the travel agent community and feels cost rationalisation on the GDS front is overdue finds out Bhisham Mansukhani

What is your immediate wishlist for flights out of India?

We want to fly daily from Mumbai and Delhi, potentially double daily from Mumbai, Chennai and Bangalore. Load factors have been high and to have these bilaterals, when demand is high, would be ideal.

What about your relationship with the travel agent?

Online sales, unfortunately, contribute less than one per cent of our sales in India. So I can't understand why airlines are trying to sideline the agent because they are in a way heavily reliant on them. Even if our online sales were to surge they will always be dwarfed by travel agent volumes, reason being the advantage that travel agents possess. We will continue to recognise and remunerate the travel agent. We take our agency relationship programme very seriously.

Would Cathay Pacific consider operating a low-cost subsidiary, Air Asia, or do you think that positioning could affect the brand?

I don't think that full service carriers are good and low cost are not. That said, we operate in the same universe and therefore we cannot ignore the fact that at some point we may well be competing for the same passenger. Yet, for now, having studied the model, we have decided to defer any plan for launching the same.

Are there any advantages that a scheduled carrier such as yours enjoys over low cost carriers?

There are. Our cargo capacity, which is a major revenue source, allows us to drop our own fares and compete with low cost carriers. At the same time, we have a captive audience of premium class passengers all of which allows us to price down the economy product.

Also, as a business airline, we are less susceptible to the vagaries of seasonality. That said, we are constantly reviewing our product and removing certain frills like seat telephony which is hardly used anyway.