SpiceJet is exploring the option of buying more small aircraft, the airline promoter, Ajay Singh, said on Friday.

"The new Government policy provides significant incentives for regional air travel. We expect that will happen and there will be big growth. We think that the growth is coming for tier II and tier IIII towns. We want to expand on our base of being the largest operator of regional jets in India,” Ajay told newspersons on the sidelines of 'India’s Time to Fly', a conference on aerospace innovation jointly organised by Boeing Company and IIT Bombay.

While declining to get into the numbers of aircraft that the airline planned to order, he did say that the small aircraft that SpiceJet is looking to acquire will seat a maximum of 80 passengers.

The SpiceJet promoter added that the airline is also looking to order more of the larger aircraft that it already has in its fleet.

"We are negotiating with the manufacturers and we hope that the order can be placed in this financial year. It will be for a significant amount of aircraft, although we still have to decide the numbers. It will also depend on the deal we get from the manufacturers.''

He added that the deliveries for the 55 Boeing 737 Max aircraft that the airline had ordered last year is expected to start at the end of 2017.

"We expect that those orders will be subsumed in the larger orders that we place now,” Ajay said adding that it will be wrong to assume that this mean the company is going to order Boeing aircraft.

"If we decide to go with Airbus, then we will have a mechanism to deal with the Boeing order that we have today,” he pointed out.

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