NEW DELHI/MUMBAI.
While Air India struggles, India's private sector air carriers are adding flights across the country connecting metros with Tier II and Tier III cities. They are giving passengers more options to travel as demand remains robust.
GoAir, IndiGo and SpiceJet are adding flights, Vistara is growing its fleet while Jet Airways is planning to announce new services shortly. (See Jet Air)
Budget carrier GoAir, the Wadia Group-promoted airline and the second most profitable carrier after IndiGo, has disclosed its ambitious plans to increase the air connectivity to tier 2 and tier 3 cities from the metros. It will introduce 12 additional daily services and four new routes on its network in upcoming summer schedule from March.
GoAir as of now operates 144 daily flights across 22 domestic destinations with a fleet of 19 Airbus A320 planes. It had been earlier offering Rs 691+ taxes tickets.
GoAir has announced in a release.-
- It is launching 12 additional daily frequencies and 4 new routes.
- Direct connectivity to Leh from Mumbai, and Port Blair from Bengaluru.
- Additional frequencies with improved timings have also been introduced connecting 10 Indian cities
- Ranchi, Lucknow and Patna will have increased flights from Delhi.
- Besides, Srinagar will be additionally connected with Mumbai, among other enhanced connections.
- A new daily flight connecting Bengaluru to Patna and Ranchi would also be introduced during the summers of 2016,
- Ahmedabad being an important market, a third daily direct flight will be introduced from Mumbai.
GoAir will be the first domestic airline providing such direct connections to the two remote areas of the country.
In the wake of growing demand on these sectors and with the launch of these new routes, GoAir becomes the first airline to directly connect
- Mumbai - Leh and
- Bengaluru - Port Blair.
It added that 'improved' timings will be implemented on key routes like
- Mumbai - Bengaluru,
- Delhi - Bengaluru,
- Mumbai - Goa,
- Delhi - Goa and
- Delhi - Kolkata.
"The new summer schedule follows the principle of connecting the triangle of Mumbai-Delhi-Bengaluru with better timings and connectivity from these main hubs to Tier II and Tier III cities," said GoAir Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, "the schedules have been planned to allow quick and convenient connections for customers, we hope both holiday and business travelers would find the new flights attractive and convenient".
IndiGo announced the launch of 24 new flights connecting key cities within the country.
IndiGo said in a release that it is launching several flights as follows:-
Effective 07 January, 2016
- Delhi to Trivandrum,
- Bengaluru to Vishakhapatnam,
- Bengaluru to Bhubaneshwar,
- Ahmedabad to Bengaluru,
- Bhubaneshwar to Kolkata and
- Chennai to Trivandrum.
Effective January 14, 2016
- 6th daily non-stop flight between Chennai and Hyderabad.
Effective January 15, 2016
- Bengaluru to Kolkata,
- Delhi to Ahmedabad,
- Delhi to Bengaluru,
- Delhi to Kolkata and
- Hyderabad to Mumbai;"
SpiceJet has increased capacity on the Delhi-Kabul route and other domestic routes such as
- Chennai- Kochi,
- Bengaluru-Vijaywada,
- Kochi-Chennai and
- Hyderabad-Vijaywada.
Vistara will add 4 Airbus A320 planes this year. The airline currently operates a fleet of 9 Airbus 320 aircraft and operates 307 weekly flights to 12 destinations across the country.
