Mumbai: Wadia group-owned budget carrier GoAir plans to enhance capacity by 21 per cent in this fiscal by expanding its route network across metro and non-metro cities and higher aircraft utilisation.
"We are planning to increase capacity by 21 per cent, offering over 8.5 million seats in the current fiscal," GoAir chief executive Giorgio De Roni said. He said that the airline's strategy to achieve this goal is based on few pillars that constitute its "Vision 2015".
"Vision 2015 entails offering customers the most attractive and sustainable fares; high aircraft utilisation, an efficient cost structure and further strengthening of services between metro airports and tier II and tier III cities, particularly to those markets that have consistently grown at remarkable rates in the recent years," he said.
GoAir has registered a very healthy traffic growth of 12.5 and 14.6 per cent in the first two months of the 2014-15 fiscal, which helped it corner a record 9.5 per cent market share, De Roni said. This has been achieved with consistently lowest number of passenger complaints in the industry in the last fiscal along with profitable and sustainable growth, he added.
GoAir operates over 900 flights a week to 21 domestic destinations with a fleet of 19 aircraft. It is set to add delivery of one more aircraft in July. Besides, GoAir has ordered for 72 NEO Airbus aircraft and the deliveries of these planes are expected between 2016 and 2020.
"In the meantime, we are also analysing the opportunity to lease some additional aircraft to sustain our growth plan. The domestic aviation market is expected to become the third largest within the next few years and GoAir is committed to play a key role in this growth," De Roni said.
On the airline's proposed international operations, he said that the airline expects to start operations by September next year. "We will soon achieve the 20 aircraft size. This will make us eligible to fly abroad as per the 5/20 rule. We expect to fly international in the first half of next financial year," he said.
Our Airbus A-320 fleet works efficiently in the range of 3.5-4.5 hours flight, therefore the focus will be on the destinations falling in this radius, he said adding much of it will also depend on the available of traffic Rights at the time of our application.
Earlier, GoAir was mulling international flights by this fiscal as the previous government had sought to scrap the 5/20 rule just days before going into general elections. However, it failed to do, leaving it for the new government to take a call on the issue.
The existing rules require domestic carriers to be in operation for at least five years and have a fleet of a minimum 20 aircraft to be eligible to fly on global routes.
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