Budget carrier AirAsia India has charted out expansion plans to connect more tier-II and III cities and set a target to commence flights to overseas destinations by January 2019, a top official said.<\/p>\n
The airliner last week inducted its 16th aircraft and announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its list of destinations.<\/p>\n
According to AirAsia India, managing director and CEO, Amar Abrol, the airliner has planned to commence overseas operation by January 2019 once it has 20 or more planes.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur strategy is that once we get to 20 planes (operating in domestic operations) we will start flying international. Mostly, it will be to South East Asian countries,\u201d he told PTI in Chennai.<\/p>\n
Stating that 27% of the people who fly with AirAsia were flying for the first time ever, he said, \u201cSo, we are opening up Indian skies. And we are getting lot many more Indians to fly for the first time.\u201d<\/p>\n
The plan is to connect more tier II and III cities in India, wherever A320 can go and also start flying international after crossing 20 aircraft, he said.<\/p>\n
Elaborating, he said, the company would serve those markets which were already connected by the airliner\u2019s group entities — AirAsia Malaysia, AirAsia Indonesia, AirAsia Thailand.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will be flying mostly to Malaysia, Indonesia and neighbouring SAARC countries as well. Bangladesh, Nepal and so on and so forth,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Asked whether there would be any competition within the AirAsia Group itself, as AirAsia Malaysia and AirAsia Thailand operate, he replied in the affirmative saying, it will be healthy competition between the airlines.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat is not a problem. I think there is enough demand for AirAsia Malaysia to grow and AirAsia India to grow.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said the customers will decide the flight to a destination, whether it belongs to AirAsia Malaysia or AirAsia India.<\/p>\n
The government\u2019s ambitious UDAN (Ude Desh Ke Aam Naagrik) scheme, under which fares are capped at Rs 2,500 for a one-hour flight. It aims at boosting air connectivity to and from unserved and under-served airports and making flying more affordable.<\/p>\n
\u201cUDAAN scheme is typically meant for 10-seater or 15- seater ATRs. We have big planes. Hence we are not participating in Udan Scheme per se,\u201d Abrol said.<\/p>\n
The company recently introduced flights in the Bhubaneswar-Chennai route.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are connecting Chennai to Bhubaneswar and we are not necessarily connecting Chennai to New Delhi, because that is a market which is already served very well\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Budget carrier AirAsia India has charted out expansion plans to connect more tier-II and III cities and set a target to commence flights to overseas destinations by January 2019, a top official said. The airliner last week inducted its 16th aircraft and announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its list of destinations. According […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23715,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[410],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23713"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23716,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23713\/revisions\/23716"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}