The Hindu Business Line : To avoid flight cancellation — Air Deccan to add `spare aircraft' to fleet soon

AIR Deccan will soon add a `spare aircraft' to its fleet to ensure that scheduled operations are not hindered by non-availability of aircraft. The airline, on a few occasions, has had to cancel some flights on account of non-availability of aircraft.

The `spare aircraft', which could be of Airbus or ATR make, is expected to join Air Deccan's existing fleet within the next six months.

Reliability question: Addressing a news conference here on Friday to announce Air Deccan's tie-up with Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Ltd (HPCL) to distribute air tickets from select HP outlets, Mr John K. Kuruvilla, Chief Revenue Officer & Head Commercial, said the airline was aware of the problems that passengers faced on account of abrupt cancellations of a few scheduled flights.

This, he admitted, had raised question marks on the reliability of the airline's operations. The proposed `spare aircraft' would be pressed into service in the event of unforeseen disruptions in flight operations. When not in use as part of scheduled operations, it would operate as a charter aircraft.

Connecting the unconnected: Mr Kuruvilla said the airline presently operated 160 flights carrying more than 7,500 passengers per day. The fleet would be augmented by the addition of one aircraft every month for at least a few more years. The idea was to not only connect every part of India that was already connected but also to connect towns and cities that were not.

With a passenger load factor of between 70 and 80 per cent round the year, Air Deccan was hopeful of generating revenues of Rs 1,000 crore in the current fiscal.

The airline currently has a market share of 11 per cent on the routes it has flight operations. Its capacity share on the same routes is stated to be around 14 per cent.

Tie-up with HPCL: Air Deccan has tied up with HPCL to distribute air tickets at select HP retail outlets. The initiative, which has already been launched in Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore and Mumbai, has now been extended to Kolkata. Forty outlets in Kolkata have been short-listed in this regard. At present, in the cities that the initiative has been rolled out, only 2 per cent of the airline's total offline ticket sales are from the HP outlets. This is expected to go up over time, according to Mr Kuruvilla.

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