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K. Giriprakash

Bangalore , May 4

AIR Deccan expects to post revenues of Rs 1,000 crore for the current fiscal though revenue for the last fiscal has fallen short of its target but has managed to notch up marginal profit.

An official of the airline told Business Line that Air Deccan posted revenues of around Rs 315 crore compared with the projected revenues of around Rs 460 crore.

This was largely because of the delay in delivery of A320s last fiscal.

But the company has been able to turn around to post a marginal profit during its first full fiscal year.

The airline, which was the first and is the only one in the country to offer tickets at Rs 500 and now wants to offer at Re 1 per ticket, does not make money out of selling tickets at such low prices.

To break even, it costs the airline between Rs 2,000 and Rs 2,500 per ticket for a flying time of one hour on an Airbus A320.

It costs the airline Rs 33 per litre of aviation turbine fuel for flying Airbus and Rs 27 per litre for flying ATRs.

The airline currently has a fleet consisting of five Airbus A320s and 12ATRs.

It logs 10 per cent cancellation of flights though the airline Managing Director, Capt G.R. Gopinath, admitted that it was not a good average. "Only when we bring it down to 2-3 per cent, can we hope to do better," he said.

The cancellations are more in the case of ATRs than with Airbus. This was because ATRs fly to remote towns, which do not have good infrastructure for the aircraft to land.

The airline operates 100 flights a day to 32 destinations. Its cabin crew for each of the Airbus A320 is four and one for every ATR aircraft.

The airline earns part of its revenues by providing branding opportunities in the interiors and exteriors of the aircraft, television ad spots and boarding cards.

The airline has also reduced the turnaround time for each aircraft from about 55 minutes to 40 minutes for an Airbus and 20 minutes for an ATR. It recently tied up with HPCL to sell tickets at their petrol stations.

The average revenue from the 20 petrol stations is around Rs 75,000 per week with some of the big petrol stations posting revenue of over Rs 1.5 lakh per day.

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