The Hindu Business Line : Air Sahara plans to reduce unit cost

THE newly-appointed President of Air Sahara, Mr Rono J. Dutta, has said that the goal of the airline was to provide global quality at a low cost to its passengers.

In his maiden interaction with presspersons after taking up the top job in Air Sahara, Mr Dutta said that the airline would look at downsizing its unit cost while expanding the airlines' network and fleet.

"Air Sahara is an innovative and nimble airline. This will continue. In the short term, we will look at absolute safety and reliability. Besides, we will also work towards achieving comparative cost of operations that are comparable on a global basis. However, one thing is certain - the airline customer focus will continue," Mr Dutta said.

While there were several issues connected with the airline industry on which the Government will have to take action, internally, the airline will look at reducing cycle time, which is the amount of time that the aircraft spends on the ground between two flights and at making all processes even more efficient, the airline President said.

While refusing to disclose whether the airline was in touch with any other entity to participate in the proposed restructuring and modernisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports, Mr Dutta merely said that the airline would participate in the process and was considering all alternatives.

On the issue of the airline looking at foreign direct investment (FDI) inflow into Air Sahara, Mr Dutta said that at this time there was no reason to consider offloading stake in the airline to a foreign partner.

Besides, the airline was working on a fleet plan to take best advantage of the possible opening up of more international routes for the domestic aviation industry.

"We always look at new revenue sources and cargo and engineering could be one of them," he said.

Meanwhile, the airline has pushed back to September plans to start regular flights between India and Kathmandu. Confirming the decision , the airlines' newly appointed Executive Vice-President, Mr Alok Sharma, said this was being done to meet the demands of the market.

"The market asked us to push back the launch to September. We have the aircraft to launch operations but the market has asked us not to do so now," Mr Sharma said.

The airline was earlier looking at launching its Kathmandu operations later this month. Mr Dutta added that the Kathmandu flight would be launched on September 4.

The airline had launched its first international operations in April this year with a daily flight on the Chennai-Colombo sector.