GoAir said on Thursday that it would opt for a different strategy over its peers by not starting international flights but increasing its coverage of smaller cities and towns across the country.
This comes even as rival IndiGo announced plans to start operations on international routes from September this year.
“Going forward, we will roll out in cities where we don't serve today, such as Tier 2 and 3 towns. At present, most of our flights connect the metros with the largest share coming from the Delhi-Mumbai sector,” Mr Jeh Wadia, Managing Director, GoAir, said.
The Wadia family-owned low cost carrier has ordered a total of 92 A320 aircrafts from Airbus for a total of $9.6 billion.
Going global difficult
Asked why GoAir has chosen not to go international, Mr Wadia said, “The amount of competition we will face outside India is huge. There are many low cost carriers operating in the Middle-East and South Asia, who will immediately drop fares if we announce entry. It's going to be a bloodbath.”
GoAir will also see a jump in hiring of pilots, crew and ground staff in concert with the increase in its fleet. “For each aircraft we will hire five sets of pilots and five sets of cabin crew,” he said. This means hiring of 820 more pilots for the 82 new planes it hopes to add and a minimum additional crew of 1,640 (around 4-5 crew members on each flight).
Pilot training
Mr Giorgio de Roni, CEO said that due to the acute shortage of trained manpower in the aviation sector, few airlines are also planning to form a common training programme.
“We are figuring out how to face the challenge of having trained pilots. We may set up a common training facility with a flight simulator. We need to work together as such a machine needs to run 16 hours a day to be profitable,” Mr de Roni said.
Mr Vishwas Udgirkar from Deloitte said that the current pace of growth in the industry makes it necessary for airlines to acquire new planes in order to retain market share.
“I am not sure how they (GoAir) plan to raise the funds. However, if the market does not pick up as projected, they can always defer the order by paying a small penalty or sublet the planes to some other country where there is high demand,” he added.