Air Blue keen to start operations to India

airblue, Pakistan's largest private sector airline, has placed an order for six A320 aircraft and will start receiving deliveries from July 2009, a top official said yesterday. "We are also in touch with Airbus and Boeing for long-haul aircraft to expand our services to North America and European destinations," said Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, Chief Operating Officer of the airline. He said airblue has made tremendous gains in growth and revenue generation in first three years of operations. "We have successfully completed three years operations on June 18, 2007, and during this period our annual growth has been 70 per cent," he said adding that the management is doing its best to further improve the performance in coming year," he said.

airblue started operations on June 18, 2004 on domestic routes. Later it added Dubai as its regional destination and from June 1, 2007, it became Pakistan's first private airline to go international by flying four weekly flights on Islamabad-Manchester route. It is also planning to extend its services to North America and other European destinations in days to come. Amongst the future destinations the airline is considering Lahore-London, Islamabad-London and European cities Barcelona, Coopenhagen and increase presence in Middle East with flights to Muscat, Abu Dhabi and Amman.

The airline started operations with three A320s aircraft acquired on wet lease has now seven planes with two more A320s and two new generation A321s that are used mainly on Islamabad-Manchester sector. "As an international carrier airblue is keen to start operations to India but all depends on the aviation policies of the two countries," he added. Abbasi, who also served as Chairman and Chief Executive of Pakistan International Airlines during late 90s, said that currently the aircraft operated under wet lease arrangement were six to seven years old. "When our planes are delivered by Airbus the average aircraft age will be reduced to three years," Abbasi maintained.

He said despite rising fuel prices that had forced several airlines to cease operations or were forced to merge, airblue was a profit-making enterprise with steady rise in revenues. "We have achieved profitability through stringent policies that could be measured that our manpower per aircraft is just 150 employees," he said. Asked whether airblue would be interested in bidding for PIA if the government decided to privatise the loss-making national carrier, Abbasi said: "We will be interested but all depends on the terms and conditions of the privatisation policy."

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