The Hindu Business Line : Panel to rationalise Indian's global routes

The Indian Chairman and Managing Director, Mr Vishwapathi Trivedi, told Business Line that a panel has been set up for rationalisation of international routes. He said there is a possibility that Indian may not fly into London because the yield on that route was falling.

He said instead of flying into London, Indian is looking at the possibility of operating flights to Birmingham. The panel will also look into operating flights to Beijing, one of the cities in South Africa and also Australia and Hong Kong.

Aircraft features

Indian has ordered for 43 aircraft from Airbus worth around $2.2billion. It consists of 20 A321s, 10 A319s and four A320s. First of the 122-seater A319s was delivered a few weeks ago. Deliveries of these aircraft will be scaled up from June 2007 with six aircraft being delivered that year, 12 in 2008, 18 in 2009 and the remaining six in 2010.

The A321 will have 122 seats, A321 will have 172 seats and the A320 will have 140 seats. All the aircraft will have two-class configuration. The airline had recently at its board meeting decided to lease five Airbus aircraft and six regional jets. The lease will be between three years and five years with some of the aircraft being deployed on the Gulf routes. The airline currently operates flights to 18 international destinations including Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, and Bangkok.

Mr Trivedi had earlier said that the airline will make profits of around Rs 75 crore this fiscal with revenue increasing nearly 10 per cent to Rs 7,000 crore. The airline is also planning to revise wages of its employees after a gap of around 10 years. A panel is being set up for this purpose. The airline has already indicated that the proposed merger between Air India and Indian will not hamper the implementation of the wage revision which is expected by the end of this fiscal.