Ultra-Smooth Take Off

According to him, the timing could not be better. To emphasise this, he spews these figures: In 1995, the number of Japanese arrivals in India grew by almost 20 per cent, while 25,000 Indians visited Japan. Yamashita attributes this to the strong growth in the Indian economy and increased Japanese investment in India.

Yamashita is confident of cornering around 13 per cent of passenger traffic and 10 per cent of cargo traffic between India and Japan in ANAs first year of operation. Such confidence is hardly surprising from someone who successfully developed ANAs Los Angeles-Tokyo and New York-Tokyo routes during his eight year long stint in America.

In fact, Yamashita has spent most of his working life outside

of Japan, including fifteen years in ANAs hotel developing division in Singapore and Manila. He reminisces, I learnt a lot during this period