A fresh surge of competition from Indian and international carriers has prompted Air France to fine tune its strategy for India and replicate its US model to suit local needs.

The Air France Executive Vice-President for network management and marketing, Mr Bruno Matheu, told Business Line that after the success of the airline’s Phoenix USA programme targeting the specific expectations of US customer s, it has now launched a similar programme for India. Air France, which flies out of five Indian cities with 28 weekly flights, carries around 1.5 lakh Indian customers every year.

Mr Viviane Dal Mas, who runs the Phoenix programme, said Air France wants to become the premier European airline on the Indian market. “US airlines are raising their profile on flights between India and the US, often with non-stop services,” Mr Dal Mas, said.

“At the same time, we are having to cope with the very aggressive sales policies of airlines based in the Persian Gulf, which are moving into this market, or with new Indian airlines such as Jet Airways or Kingfisher. Not forgetting the legacy European carriers such as Lufthansa and British Airways.”

Good response

But Mr Matheu said the airline has seen good response for its flights out of India and interestingly, while most passengers prefer to travel to France during summer, Indians prefer the winter months to fly into France.

“This is especially helpful for us because we get the advantage of more peak seasons for the airline,” Mr Matheu said. Currently, the passenger load factor from India oscillates between 82 per cent and 92 per cent.

As with the US version, the Phoenix India programme is cross-functional. The Paris hub is used by some 80 per cent of Air France’s Indian passengers for their flight connections, which is why we will be concentrating on raising the awareness of all frontline personnel at Terminals F (check-in for Bangalore and Chennai), E (Mumbai and New Delhi) and S3, Mr Dal Mas said.

Serve better

Air France is also putting its entire cabin crew as well as its managers through a series of exercises to help them serve their Indian customers better. For example, the airline has tried to make its crew understand better each other by concentrating on body language.

A series of “posters” showing Indian body language were displayed in the briefing rooms. The briefing also stresses the need for marks of respect, warmth, a lack of discrimination, cabin presence or a proactive approach, which are all important points for Indian customers.

“Indians are very sensitive to human relations as well as to the notion of quality of service,” Mr Dal Mas said. Special Phoenix India coordinators are being recruited to raise awareness and cascade the programme.

Once the airline starts getting more Indian passengers on board, it also plans to bring in larger aircraft, Mr Matheu said. “We may not get the A380 immediately, but we will certainly bring in bigger aircraft than those we currently fly,” Mr Matheu said.