Kingfisher Air inducts A320, eyes 30 aircraft

Liquor baron Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines inducted a brand new Airbus A320 into its fleet today at Toulose in Paris. Mallya said his airlines company will become the largest private Indian carrier by 2010 with a fleet of 55 aircrafts.

This is by far the largest expansion plan charted out by a start-up carrier in the country. Mallya had earlier said that his airline would buy 30 odd aircrafts from Airbus Industrie. The fleet expansion, Mallya said, will cost Rs 15,000 crore.

Mallya-owned carrier also plans to have a pricing scheme, whereby tickets will be priced between those of a business class and economy class on a full service carrier now.

'We want to target the next generation Indians. It is projected that there would be about 150 million of them in the near future. This is a carrier for them,' Mallya said at the aircraft induction function.

The carrier, which will have 11 aircrafts on its fleet by December 2005, expects to operate about 66 flights a day then. Kingfisher Airlines, however, will not offer tickets at Rs 500 to woo passengers.

'We are offering certain services to people who are willing to pay for such services. We hope to have a substantial market share,' Mallya said.

The airline will offer a single class configuration with 174 seats on all the routes. It is expected that the carrier will break even in the very first year of operations itself.

Travel for the trip was sponsored by Kingfisher Airlines