The Hindu Business Line : Air India plans to launch economy services next year

AIR-INDIA Express, the no-frills subsidiary of Air-India, is expected to commence operations with 135 flights per week from eight centres in the country.

According to the AI Chairman and Managing Director, Mr V. Thulasidas, flights from Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi will operate to the Gulf and West Asia . The operations from Chennai, Kolkata and Guwahati will connect destinations in South-East Asia. Besides, the airline will operate services to the Gulf and West Asia from Mumbai and Delhi.

These services will be rolled out in a phased manner from January 2005. Fares on the airline will be around 25 per cent cheaper than that on a full-service airline.

In the first phase, the airline will deploy the 14 aircraft it has tendered for in July. The airline hopes to meet its aircraft requirement for the next two years with these tenders, he said.

On the alliance with Lufthansa, he said the code-share arrangement with the German national carrier would come into effect in a phased manner from October 1. Services would be expanded as and when the airline takes delivery of the aircraft it has tendered for.

Explaining how the code-share would work, he says it would enable A-I, in association with Lufthansa, to increase direct connections from points in India to points in Germany.

For, example, the two airlines would together operate a daily service between Bangalore and Frankfurt, which would take off at the same time each day, and would carry the code of both airlines. The daily services would be split in a 4:3 ratio.

From Frankfurt, passengers would have several more options to travel within Europe as well as onward to destinations in the US. They would be able to fly to four cities in Europe (Lyon, Geneva, Amsterdam, Zurich), four in Germany (Berlin, Munich, Dusseldorf, and Stuttgart), besides five stations in the US (Washington, Chicago, Denver, Detroit, and Los Angeles) on the Lufthansa network.