Business | Aviation
More flights on Dubai-Delhi route
Indian, India's newly rebranded domestic and regional carrier, will double its current daily flights from Dubai to Delhi from in winter this year, as it gears up to receive 43 new Airbuses ordered last year.
- By Saifur Rahman, Business News Editor
- Published: 00:00 July 31, 2006
Dubai: Indian, India's newly rebranded domestic and regional carrier, will double its current daily flights from Dubai to Delhi from in winter this year, as it gears up to receive 43 new Airbuses ordered last year.
Indian will receive its first of the 43 single-aisle aircraft in October this year followed by once-a-month delivery of the following 42 starting from early next year, a senior Indian official said yesterday.
"This will help us to add capacity to the existing 73 destinations that the carrier serves, including 17 international cities," Deepak Brara, director for public relations at Indian, said. "An additional daily flight will help us carry more passengers out of Dubai to Delhi and with our excellent connections to destinations in India."
The airline will award a major leasing tender in a months for 12 wide-bodied aircraft. "We are currently evaluating the bids, a combination of the A330 and B767 family," he said. "We expect to award the contract in a month."
Indian has a fleet of 70 aircraft, including 57 Airbus and 11 Boeing, while the rest two are smaller turbo-props. These include 23 on lease. Leasing craft allows the airline to maintain growth as sometimes purchase decisions take a long time, he said. The new acquisition will increase its fleet size to 113. The airline operates 75 weekly flights from the UAE, including 35 from Dubai.
Brara said India's domestic aviation market is growing at a rate of 50 per cent. "The industry estimated our market to grow between 10 to 12 per cent. However, during the four months this year, we witnessed a 50 per cent growth in domestic traffic," he said. "This is over and above of the 28 per cent growth last year."
India's six domestic carriers handle about 90,000 passengers per day. "Our market share is about 23 to 24 per cent on domestic routes," he said.
Once the market leader, which enjoyed a monopoly till the mid 1990s, Indian saw its share dwindling amid growing competition as India liberalised its aviation sector. "Yes, our share is shrinking. But as long as the market is growing, we are also going to carry more passengers," he said.
Brara, who was in Dubai en route to India from Toulouse, said the airline has finalised inflight entertainment system for the new fleet. "We will offer satellite TV channels and telecom services on board all the aircraft except the first one, which is almost ready," he said.
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