GoFirst, formerly known as GoAir, is likely to reach its pre-Covid 300 daily domestic flights mark by Saturday.

Speaking to BusinessLine , a top official said that prior to Covid, the IPO-bound airline flew over 345 daily flights, including over 45 international flights.

“With customer confidence rising in travel and the number of vaccinated passengers increasing as well, GoFirst has started to put muscle back into the system,” they said.

A GoFirst spokesperson remained unavailable to comment.

32 new flights

The low-cost carrier announced the introduction of 32 new flights to its expanding domestic network on Thursday. It added Amritsar, Surat, Dehradun and Aizawl to its domestic network. While Aizawal was a re-addition, the rest of them were new destinations. These 32 flights took the airline’s daily departures to 297 flights.

Also see: Go First starts direct flight connecting Surat with metros

Sharp increase across airlines

According to ICICI Securities, the number of daily departures saw a sharp increase. As of November 6, 2020, Indian airlines operated only 1,087 flights. However, as of November 6, 2021, Indian airlines flew over 2,319 daily flights.

Also see: Air freight demand boosts PTF conversion

Last month, the winter schedule was declared by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The winter schedule — effective from October 31, 2021, till March 26, 2022 — finalised 22,287 departures from 108 airports — 4.4 per cent fewer departures than the winter schedule of pre-pandemic 2019-20 which saw 23,307 departures. However, despite lower flights allowed, Indian airlines flew 10 per cent higher flights than what theyflew in the summer schedule, according to ICICI Securities.

GoFirst gains market share

In September, GoFirst gained over 2 per cent market share to 8.2 per cent and carried over 5.80 lakh passengers.

A company source said that the airline had managed to drastically bring down its expense, which had helped them burn lesser cash.

Also see: Debt-heavy GoFirst gets ₹2,000 crore from promoter Wadia Group

The airline has received ₹2,000 crore from its promoters — the Wadia Group. Its IPO is likely to hit markets before December 12, said the source quoted above. The Wadia-owned airline has finished 16 years of operations in India.

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