The Hindu Business Line : Paramount spreads wings in South

Advertisement

Bangalore Feb. 6 Paramount Airways, promoted by the Madurai-based Paramount Group, has extended its services in the South with the launch of six additional flights effective February 7. The new sectors would be Bangalore-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bangalore, Chennai-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Chennai, Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam and Visakhapatnam-Hyderabad.

With these, the airline's daily flights have gone up to 48, and the cities it connects in the South to eight. The new services provide travellers the option of same-day return, said Mr M. Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Paramount Airways.

Launched in October 2005, he said that the airline has "already captured about 23 per cent of the southern market, and we are the market leaders in the region. Our customer retention factor is nearly 100 per cent."

It has positioned itself as a "high-value carrier against the low-cost carrier model" prevalent in the industry. "Many international airline companies are following the Paramount model now," he added.

Expansion plans

Mr Thiagarajan said that the airline does not believe in "explosive expansion; we want to expand in a sustained manner".

Stating that Paramount Airways has broken even in sectors where it has been flying for over six months, he said that the passenger load factor in these sectors was about 90 per cent.

The airline is looking beyond South, towards the western and northern regions of the country. By the end of 2008-09, it plans to establish a pan-India presence.

The airline also plans to add 15 aircraftto its current fleet of five Embraer aircraftin two-and-a-half years.

Declining to divulge investment plans, Mr Thiagarajan, however, gave a hint of the investment planned when he said that the list price of the aircraft is about $35-40 million.

Connecting small cities

The airline also looks at providing connectivity to smaller cities, as "the growth potential is huge in tier-II cities; this is where the future is. That's why we went in for smaller aircraft," he said. It would consider any small city with an airport as a potential destination, he added.