The Hindu Business Line : Air France to hike seat capacity from Chennai by 27%

In the winter schedule, Air France will have a 27 per cent increase in capacity with three flights from Chennai, two more from Bangalore and more number of seats from Mumbai.

Mr Dominique Gass, General Manager, Air France, said Air France would continue to develop its network to India, one of the fastest-growing markets.

The airline would start its tri-weekly services between Chennai and Paris from October 31. The flight will be operated using an A340, seating 291 passengers, with 30 in business class and 261 in economy.

He said depending on the performance, the airline would increase the Chennai services to five-a-week by the summer of 2007.

The service was earlier operated on a code share basis with Delta Airline aircraft and crew.

In addition to launching flights to Chennai, Air France will be increasing capacity on other flights between Europe and India with seven weekly flights from Bangalore to Paris instead of the current five.

The Paris-Mumbai sector will be operated using B 777-300 with 310 seats instead of the B 777-200 with 270 seats operated last winter.

Together, Air France and KLM will offer 42 weekly frequencies (instead of 36 last year) to Bangalore, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad and Mumbai.

Ms Kamal Sengupta, General Manager, Commercial, Air France, said the timings would enable passengers to connect to flights to the US, Canada and other parts of Europe.

She said though international traffic has been growing at 20 per cent (according to the Billing Settlement Plan statistics), Chennai has witnessed a 13-per cent reduction in capacity on the international sectors.

This is because of the change of equipment by British Airways and the withdrawal of daily flights by Delta Airlines.

Talking about the fares, Ms Sengupta said introductory offers and special fares are being worked out. The fares offered by Air France would be comparable with other European carriers, she said.