‘Capacity can’t cope with demand being seen in India:’ SWISS CEO even after adding flights here

BENGALURU: “Capacity can’t cope with the demand being seen in India.” This is what SWISS CEO Jens Fehlinger told TOI in Bengaluru on Wednesday when the airline started flights to the garden city, making it the third Indian city for this Lufthansa group airline after Delhi and Mumbai.The reason: Air India group and IndiGo have significantly cut their long-haul flights to the west primarily due to closure of Pakistan airspace for Indian carriers since last April, even as the demand for international travel to and from the country remains inelastic and high. Once the US-Iran war started on Feb 28, 2026, and all airlines had to cut flights to West Asia, many foreign carriers deployed their spare capacity to India.The Lufthansa group, for instance, used to have 318 monthly flights to India by Lufthansa, SWISS and ITA Airways (erstwhile Alitalia) till Feb 2026. By Aug, that number swelled 9% to 344 and is expected to increase to 383 by Aug 2027.“When we had to temporarily suspend our Dubai flights, we added a second daily service to Delhi (on March 19). Bengaluru, however, had been on our radar for quite some time. We carefully analysed the market, its growth potential and customer demand before deciding to add Bengaluru to our network,” said Fehlinger, a trained pilot who has operated the Airbus A320 and the super jumbo A380 and has been with the Lufthansa group for over two decades now. For the Bengaluru flight, the second daily between Delhi and Zurich has been withdrawn.So why isn’t Bengaluru a daily like Delhi was? “Due to the situation in West Asia, our flights to and from the east take longer routes. Our Tokyo and Shanghai flights now take 1.5 hour and 1 hour longer, respectively. India routes’ flying time is up by 30 minutes. Since Zurich-Bengaluru is a longer route, aircraft rotation takes longer. So we have started with five times a week, which in the next step may become daily,” said the CEO.Will the additional capacity deployed to India be scaled back when West Asia reopens? “We are looking at India for long-term investments and long-term growth. It is the second biggest market for us after the US and our presence here will go only one way — up.”Like all airlines globally, secure aircraft movement, airspace closures and fuel prices and availability are the prime concerns for SWISS in these geopolitically challenged times. “Our routes to the east have become very narrow. There are three routes now, one over the north pole, via Azerbaijan and the third via Saudi Arabia and south India. The rest is closed basically,” he said.While the cash-rich group does fuel hedging, it is preparing for fuel supply shocks despite seeing little chance of that happening. “At the moment there is no foreseeable fuel shortage at our home hubs. We are well supplied in Geneva and Zurich with pipelines and trains. But we are prepared for every scenario. If fuel (supply) stops in between, we could do tankering where we fill up at an, airport (for short hauls) that has fuel and fly back home and out without refuelling there. Or we could have fuel stops for long hauls. As of now, we don’t see the same will need to be done but we started preparations for all fuel supply scenarios from March itself. No one knows what the next few months will be like,” he said.