Taking place on Sunday 17thMarch 2013 and open to all attending delegates, The Routes Asia Strategy Summit will open Routes Asia in Mumbai. The Strategy Summit will provide a valuable insight into aviation across the region as panels of leading industry experts take part in a number of moderator led discussions addressing key air service development issues affecting commercial aviation across the entire Asia region.

Attendees of the Summit will hear keynote addresses from Mr Aditya Ghosh, President of IndiGo and Mr Rajeev Jain, Chief Executive Officer of Mumbai International Airport (MIAL). Four moderator led sessions covering various aviation related subjects affecting the region will then take place.

Session one, entitled Developing Hubs in Asia and its challenges will discuss the challenges to develop international hubs in India and explore whether India could have multiple hubs. This session will also take a look at whether Indian hubs compete with regional hubs such as Dubai, Singapore, Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur and how important the Chinese hubs are in global traffic. Moderated by Nigel Mayes, Vice President & Commercial, Routes, panellists taking part in this session include Mr Tariq H Butt, Vice President – Airport Marketing & Aero Business – MIAL, Mr Anil Srivastava, Joint Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation, Mr Deepak Brara, Commercial Director for Air India and Mr John Shepley, Senior Vice President - Network Management for Etihad Airways.

During the second session; Developing airport infrastructure in Asia – Challenges & Opportunities, moderator Mr Amber Dubey, Partner-Head of Aviation for KPMG India will ask what the main challenges that airports face are whilst also looking at what lessons can be learned from across the globe and which models work, where the money is coming from and how can the ROI for investors be balanced against the needs of airlines and passengers? The panel for this session will consist of Mr Rajeev K Jain, CEO-MIAL, Mr V P Agrawal, Chairman of the Airports Authority of India, Mr Sidharath Kapur, CFO Airport Sector of GMR Group, B Baskar, Director-Finance for BIAL and Captain Kapil Chaudhary, Director Airports for the Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA).

Mr Chris Flynn, Regional Director Pacific for PATA will moderate session three; Chasing the Tiger and the Dragon which will address the fact that thriving economies and increasing disposable incomes mean that the outbound travel markets for China and India are amongst the fastest growing in the world, which destinations will capture these markets and how will they achieve this? Mr Flynn will be joined by Mr Hou Wei, Vice President of Hainan Airlines, Mr Satish Soni, Jt Managing Director of Maharashtra Tourism Development, Mr Germal Singh, SVP of Government & International Affairs for Malaysia Airlines, Dr Subhash Goyal, Chairman of the Indian Association of Tour Operators and Dr Adam Wu, Chief Operating Officer of China Business Network.

The fourth session; Where next for Asian Low Cost Carriers? will question where next for the pan Asian LCCs?; who are the winners and losers in Japan, China & India? The session will also take a look at the future for long haul LCCs and ask how will the LCCs evolve and will there be a shift towards hybrid models? What will the market look like in 5 years time? Confirmed panellists for this final session of the day include Mr Neil Mills, CEO of Spicejet, Mr Giogio De Roni, CEO of GoAir, Mr Venggataroa Niadu, Head of Network & Fleet Management for AirAsia X, Pamidi Rao, Aviation Advisor for GVK Group Aviation Sector and Mr Tony Griffin, Senior Vice President of ASM who will moderate this discussion.

The specially developed hard hitting content and interactive format ensures that the Summit is a popular element of the event. Keep reading The HUB for further updates to the programme over the coming weeks and for more information and to register for Routes Asia 2013 Click here.