Vijay Mallya draws up flight path for Air Deccan

The Air Deccan network is a huge asset waiting to be leveraged, chairman of Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya, said Tuesday. Outlining his strategy for the two airlines at an investor summit organised by the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) in Mumbai, he said Air Deccan had expanded the non-metro market over the past few years and it was time to reap the benefits. The airline needs only a slight course correction that would amount to about Rs 500 more per ticket. He also said Kingfisher will operate on the high-density metro routes, which will be rationalised so as not to overlap with the Air Deccan connections. The focus of the low cost carrier (LCC) will be to leverage on its tier 2 and 3 city network which has a huge potential.

Stating categorically that the days of low fares and discounting are over for Air Deccan, Mr Mallya said everyone is tired of losing money. “Though we are not in the business of exploiting the customer, we are not here to bleed either,” he said. The fares will now reflect the actual cost of business. If Air Deccan had lower backend and other costs, these would be maintained, he added. On Kingfisher’s international plans, he said the strategy is to focus on the India-US traffic. The airline will take delivery of its first A340-300 long haul planes in February next year and these will fly from Bangalore to San Francisco and New York.

There is a huge demand for direct flights rather than going through hubs, he said. He hoped the government will review the rule which requires an airline to fly for five years domestically before becoming eligible for international operations. If Jet Airways gets permission to fly to the Gulf countries next year, so should Air Deccan, he added. Kingfisher and Air Deccan put together have a network of 537 flights daily to 69 destinations in India. Once international connections are established, passengers will be able to travel seamlessly to remote places in India using the Kingfisher-Deccan network, he said. Kingfisher will induct 10 wide-body planes between February and August next year. The airline is expected to make more announcements for new aircraft in the Paris air show, which begins next week.

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