Dubai
Indian low cost carriers, Air India Express and SpiceJet, are reviewing plans to launch flights to Dubai from secondary cities in India.
Air India Express is looking at launching direct flights from Ahmedabad, Madurai and Chandigarh in the next 12 months, Chief Executive K. Shyam Sundar told Gulf News on Monday.
The low cost arm of national carrier Air India will receive six Boeing 737-800s, all on lease, between February and November next year to launch the new flights.
“Some of the markets I am pretty certain about, some are still being assessed,” Sundar said at an aviation conference.
Air India Express will also soon launch four weekly services between the Indian capital New Delhi and Doha in Qatar, he said.
Competitor SpiceJet is also looking at new flights to Dubai, but will have to hold back until new aircraft arrive, Sanjiv Kapoor, SpiceJet Chief Operations Officer told reporters. “We are doing pretty well on our Dubai routes,” he said.
SpiceJet has earmarked an order of 100 narrow-body and potentially turboprop aircraft to be placed by March 31, 2016.
Kapoor said the airline has the traffic rights to launch flights to Dubai from tier 2 cities, including from Bengaluru and Chandigarh. He also said SpiceJet will only start the new flights if it can get the right slot at the increasingly congested Dubai International.
“The flights only making sense at certain times of the day and it’s very hard to get slots exactly at the right time of day,” he said.
