Air India looks outside metros
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Air India has now started focussing on connecting tier-II and tier-III cities with the metros and several new such connections are on the plan.The national carrier expects the regional sector to be the growth driver for India’s aviation industry as more of such cities require connectivity to major metros, rediff.com reported.This week it launched the Delhi-Kanpur-Kolkata flight, the third in the series after the Delhi-Gwalior-Mumbai and Delhi-Ranchi-Kolkata flights, which were launched recently.”The airline would be focussing on these attractive routes in the coming days to gain back our market share by providing the cheapest possible fares on them,” a senior Air India official was quoted saying.The competitive fares on these flights would be a major reason to attract passengers. The average fare for a Delhi-Kokata direct flight is INR 6,000 which goes up as the seats are booked.But Air India would be offering a seat at INR 4,000 on the Delhi-Kanpur-Kolkata route with little chance of escalation of fare, the report said.The company expects that operating small planes like the CRJ and the turbo-prop ATRs would lower its operating costs due to the hefty concessions on landing and parking charges.Touching on the new route, Civil Aviation Minister Vayalar Ravi was quoted saying: “Air India is making efforts to connect major cities like Kanpur with metros where there is a high demand.” “If the occupancy remains high, the national carrier plans to connect it with Mumbai and Ahmedabad soon.”The airline is operating the flight AI-9801 with a 70-seater Canadian Regional Jet aircraft.
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