The Hindu Business Line : IA willing to expand ATR aircraft operations

WITH the deployment of ATR aircraft in the North-East greatly facilitating connectivity in the region, Indian Airlines (IA) is open to the idea of replicating the initiative elsewhere in the country, provided other State Governments are willing to provide financial support to IA on the lines provided to it by the North Eastern Council.

Talking to Business Line here recently, the Chairman & Managing Director of IA, Mr Sunil Arora, said that, with the deployment of ATRs in the North-East, IA has almost doubled its capacity in the region.

"This has benefited the region which has opened up further. This was a necessity as well. However, we need to be assisted further with regard to the leasing and operational costs of these aircraft," he said.

Stating that the Union Department for Development of the North Eastern Region had taken an initiative to fund the leasing and operational costs of these ATRs, Mr Arora said operational costs in the North-East were high despite recent government initiatives on the landing and navigational fronts. "We will continue to do what we are doing because the opening up of the North-East is important for the country," he said, adding that, if and when the ATR initiative is replicated elsewhere in the country, IA would ensure that there were no gaps between aircraft lease and operational costs and bankrolling in this regard.

Meanwhile, with flights ex-Kolkata having a high passenger load factor of around 75 per cent on metro routes, IA has firmed up plans to add a morning flight to Chennai operating four days a week with Boeing 737 aircraft.

IA also has plans to augment capacity on the Kolkata-Delhi sector taking the number of flights on the route to four per day. A third flight on the Kolkata-Mumbai sector is also on the anvil.

To a question whether IA was keen to fly out to more international destinations ex-Kolkata, Mr Arora said an in-house committee has been set up and entrusted with the task of identifying new destinations and routes and the types of aircraft required to serve the identified routes.

In this context, it may be mentioned that IA was always keen to commence operations to Hong Kong from Kolkata and had approached the government some time back for permission to do so. At that time, IA had proposed to extend its Kolkata-Bangkok flights to Hong Kong depending upon aircraft availability vis-à-vis the relative market potential identified by the airline.

Whether this routing would still be preferred would depend upon the recommendations of the in-house committee, according to Mr Arora.

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