Air Sahara to ramp up flights

In a bid to regain lost ground after witnessing a drop in its share of the domestic passenger aviation market from 12 per cent to 7 per cent, Air Sahara plans to start 66 new flights to 14 new destinations.

Addressing the media today, Air Sahara president Alok Sharma said, "All these flights will start between August 18 and December 16 this year. We had been losing market share and now with the expansion plans in place, we are confident of coming back and serving the largest number of destinations out of Delhi."

The airline starts with three international and 11 domestic destinations. While daily flights will connect Dhaka, Male (Maldives) and Guangzhou (China), the airline is also targeting Indian tourist destinations like Jodhpur, Khajuraho, Port Blair, Trivandrum and Udaipur.

It is also looking at mini-metro cities like Chandigarh, Indore, Bhopal, Vadodara, Raipur and Nagpur.

In September, the airline will add two new Boeing 737-700 and 737-800 into its fleet taking the total numbers to 29.

It plans to increase its aircraft utilisation by three hours from the 7.5 hours to absorb additional flights.

It also plans to re-deploy seven grounded CR aircraft into operations in phases to increase it passenger traffic.

The airline's passenger load factor has fallen to an all-time low of 60 per cent in the recent past. With the expansion, it is targeting the previous best of 76 per cent in the passenger load factor and clock a daily average of 10,000 passengers.

On the ongoing merger tussle with the Jet Airways, Sahara ruled out any negotiations. "We are not in talks with Jet," said Sharma.

The airline has no plans to restart it London operations which were discontinued by Jet Airways during the merger negotiations and will be looking for other market in South east Asia for expansion.