Chennai Air Deccan hub

India's first budget airline Air Deccan plans to set up its main engineering and maintenance hub in Chennai. The company has applied for land from the Airports Authority of India and hopes that it will be able to start work on the hangar in the next one month.

"We have chosen Chennai as it has good infrastructure and tremendous talent. The airport is also not congested like the airports in Mumbai and Delhi," said Captain G R Gopinath, managing director, Air Deccan. He was speaking to reporters during the launch of the Airbus 320 flight to Chennai-Delhi-Guwahati sectors.

All day-to-day inspection, line maintenance and ancillary work will be done at the engineering and manufacturing facility in Chennai. The airline company's current engineering base is in Bangalore.

Air Deccan plans to link Tuticorin, Salem, Coimbatore and all unconnected parts of Tamil Nadu by December 2004. "We will start daily direct flights to Chennai-Delhi, Chennai-Mumbai and Chennai-Hyderabad shortly," added Gopinath.

The company plans on divesting 20 -25 per cent stake to fund its expansion plans. "We are currently in advanced talks with some globally recognised foreign institutions and should make an announcement soon," remarked Gopinath.

Air Deccan which currently operates 70 flights plans to increase this to 100 flights by December 2004.