'flydubai' to start Delhi operations, eyes smaller cities

Budget airline 'flydubai' today announced it will begin flights to three Indian cities, including Delhi, from Dubai next month, doubling the number of its destinations in India, with further plans to connect smaller cities with the Gulf region.
"We want to go to smaller airports in India. We want to serve the small cities," 'flydubai' CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith told reporters here today.
Speaking on the sidelines of Arabian Travel Market, which opened here, Ghaith said the budget carrier is offering more connectivity to smaller cities and in this process, it has doubled the number of cities in India to six and the weekly flights to 19 from the earlier nine.

'flydubai' currently operates nine weekly flights to Lucknow, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad from Dubai.
"We will be honoured to serve the customers from the country with whatever capacity we have," he said.
Earlier today, he announced the airline's plan to start flights to Thiruvanthapuram, Kochi and Delhi from here, taking the number of its services to six Indian cities. Four flights would operate on Delhi route and three each to Kochi and Thiruvanthapuram.

The start of the three new services will see a doubling in the number of cities in India to which the airline flies.
Asked whether 'flydubai' plans to invest in an Indian carrier, Gaith said the airline was always very open to cooperate with Indian airlines, tourism authorities and others but added that there were no talks at the moment with any Indian carrier.

"We are open to cooperate... We would love to create partnership that will be of great value to both the countries. The door is open for any commercially feasible venture which we can get," he said.
However, the Dubai government, which owns the airline, wants it to grow now, he said.
"As long as we are focussing on that, it is not that we do not want to," Gaith said, adding that it needs fresh order from the government to ink such a deal.
The announcement of the new flights came in the backdrop of India and Dubai recently signing a bilateral air services agreement which saw an increase in the number of flights that airlines from each country can operate on a weekly basis.

Emirates and 'flydubai' are the two airlines from Dubai which are allowed by the Dubai Government to operate flights to and from India while Jet, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India and Air India operate from India to Dubai.