New Delhi: The National Aviation Company Ltd (Nacil), which runs state-owned Air India, is planning to convert five of its Airbus 320 planes into low-cost carriers under the Air India Express brand. The launches would be in the winter schedule and on 10 sectors.
A normal A320 has 124 economy class seats and 20 J-class seats. After the conversion, making it a full economy class plane, the number of seats increases to 168.
These converted aircraft, say sources, would fly on 10 sectors. These include flights to Sharjah from Hyderabad, Cochin, Trivandrum, Amritsar and Lucknow, Calicut-Dubai, Chennai-Kuala Lumpur, and Chennai-Colombo. An Air India spokesperson said the routes would be decided next week.
However, industry sources say Calicut-Dubai and Chennai-Colombo are routes where there is a demand for business class. Business class flyers account for 12 per cent of the revenue and many say the strategy to move more and more aircraft into a single configuration could have an adverse impact on the company’s total revenues from these flights.
A-I Express operates 193 weekly flights to 14 international destinations – Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Muscat, Salalah, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Bahrain, Doha, Kuwait, Colombo and Dhaka from 17 Indian cities.
22/09/09 Mihir Mishra/Business Standard
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