Alliance Air to focus on cost control, phasing out of expat pilots

Alliance Air, which is the largest regional airline, is currently operating 77 daily flights compared to 126 last year

When C S Subbiah took over as the chief executive officer of Alliance Air in 2016 the carrier had a mixed fleet of ATR aicraft and old fuel guzzling CRJ jets. The airline had a limited number of ATR pilots and its daily fleet utilisation was a poor 4.5 hours per aircraft. Subbiah's task was to replace all the old jets, bring in a single type of fleet and introduce new routes.

These efforts of over three years finally paid off after Air India's subsidiary Alliance Air registered an operating profit of Rs 65 crore in FY 2020. This was