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Air Sahara to draw up new business plan -- Fresh look at fleet route expansion

Ashwini Phadnis

NEW DELHI, July 18

AIR Sahara (AS) proposes to draw up a new business plan which will entail a fresh look at fleet and route expansion and strategies to capture a larger portion of the domestic market at its board meeting which is scheduled to be held shortly.

The airlines' newly reappointed Chief Executive Officer, Mr U.K. Bose, told Business Line that the board meeting will look at several options including routes, fares, strategies and increasing frequency, among other items. ``AS will make major announceme nts when the options are cleared by the board which is scheduled to meet towards the end of the month. It will be premature to talk about this just yet,'' Mr Bose said.

Sahara officials added that the airlines will look at increasing connectivity to sectors on which it is already operating to corner a greater share of the market.

``In the first phase of expansion, AS will look into providing greater convenience to the passengers by increasing the number of flights that we offer between various sectors at present. This could see the airline operating four and eventually five daily services between Delhi and Mumbai as compared to only two right now. However, this is not the only sector which is being looked at,'' AS sources said.

Besides, the airline could also offer lower fares to passengers if they traveled by a hopping flight instead of taking a direct flight to the final destination.

``If a passenger travelling to Mumbai from Delhi decides to fly on our flight which has a halt in-between before reaching the final destination, then they may pay less than what is charged from a passenger who travels directly between Delhi-Mumbai. Such practices are common abroad and we may look at various options to lower fares,'' officials said.

When questioned on how much lower the hopping fares would be, officials only said that they would be lower than the market fares.

On the issue of how many or which varieties of aircraft the airlines is looking at, officials only said that with a small fleet it was unlikely to change the current fleet structure. The airline currently operates an all Boeing 737 aircraft fleet of six aircraft.