Air Deccan to operate 100 flights a day
Chennai: Air Deccan, the low-cost domestic airline, has planned to increase by December its daily flights from 70 to 100 as well as to secure a part of the "ethnic market" of West Asia in the foreseeable future, Managing Director G R Gopinath said here.
"Our airline is so powerful in its business module that red-tape has been converted into red-carpetism," Gopinath said on the occasion of the airline's iaugural Airbus A-320 flight on the Chennai-New Delhi route yesterday.
"Our slogan is to make every Indian fly and as part of the strategy, we have introduced the Dyna fares, under which the fares ranged from Rs 500 plus taxes to Rs 6600 on the Chennai-Delhi sector," he said.
He explained that 25 per cent of the 180 seats in an Airbus would be available to passengers at low-cost, provided the bookings were made three months in advance.
"The module is so strong that no bureaucratic wrangle from any quarters can hamper our growth," he said.
"Our main objective is to connect all unconnected parts of the country, apart from the metros, and offer passengers the lowest possible fares," he said.
It will be launching flights from New Delhi to Dehradun, Ludhiana, Agra, Jaipur, Kanpur, Kulu, Shimla and other small cities by the end of next month, Gopinath said.
The country has nearly 400 small and medium sized airports, which are now unconnected. There are 150 aircraft and 15 million people travel by air every year.
Air Deccan, a subsidiary of Deccan Aviation (DA), the country's largest private sector helicopter charter company, and pioneers of heli-tourism in India, has signed for 11 Airbuses of which four would join the fleet by March next.
It has seven ATRs (Avions de Transport Regionale) now and five more will join the fleet in the last quarter of this calendar.
The airline expects to clock a revenue of 125 million US dollar and carry close to two million passengers by March next, according to airline sources.
The Deccan Aviation launched its services from the corporate base at Bangalore in September 1997, with its nine helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft.
