AirAsia India to begin overseas operations by January 2019: MD&CEO

Representation picBudget carrier AirAsia India has charted out expansion plans to connect more tierII and III cities and set a target to commence flights to overseas destinations by January 2019 a top official said The airliner last week inducted its 16th aircraft and announced the addition of Nagpur and Indore to its list of destinations According to AirAsia India Managing Director and CEO Amar Abrol the airliner has planned to commence overseas operation by January 2019 once it has 20 or more planesOur strategy is that once we get to 20 planes operating in domestic operations we will start flying international Mostly it will be to South East Asian countries he told PTI here Stating that 27 per cent of the people who fly with AirAsia were flying for the first time ever he said So we are opening up Indian skies And we are getting lot many more Indians to fly for the first timeThe plan is to connect more and more tier II and III cities in India wherever A320 can go and also start flying international after crossing 20 aircraft he said Elaborating he said the company would serve those markets which were already connected by the airliners group entities AirAsia Malaysia AirAsia Indonesia AirAsia Thailand We will be flying mostly to Malaysia Indonesia and neighbouring SAARC countries as wellBangladesh Nepal and so on and so forth he said Asked whether there would be any competition within the AirAsia Group itself as AirAsia Malaysia and AirAsia Thailand operate he replied in the affirmative saying it will be healthy competition between the airlines That is not a problem I think there is enough demand for AirAsia Malaysia to grow and AirAsia India to grow He said the customer would be deciding the flight to a destination whether it may belong to AirAsia Malaysia or AirAsia IndiaFor the customer there will not be any difference Still it will be an AirAsia plane AirAsia service There will not be any difference Probably there may be some difference in the cabin crew he said On pricing he said AirAsia Malaysia is an independent entity AirAsia India is an independent entity We will price according to what we feel is right But ultimately it is the consumers who will decide which flight they want to take Referring to the Centres ambitious UDAAN scheme which aims to connect underserved cities Abrol said the airliner was not participating in the scheme because the flights owned by them were Airbus A320sThe governments ambitious UDAN Ude Desh Ke Aam Naagrik scheme under which fares are capped at Rs 2500 for a onehour flight It aims at boosting air connectivity to and from unserved and underserved airports and making flying more affordable UDAAN scheme is typically meant for 10seater or 15 seater ATRs We have big planes Hence we are not participating in Udan Scheme per se Abrol said Stating that AirAsia was already connecting metros to nonmetros other than BengaluruChennai BengaluruNew Delhi he said the focus will be on tier II and III citiesOur focus has been on tier II and III cities Because we believe that is where quite a lot of demand is he said The company recently introduced flights in the BhubaneswarChennai route We are connecting Chennai to Bhubaneswar and we are not necessarily connecting Chennai to New Delhi because that is a market which is already served very well he said AirAsia India currently flies to 17 destinations with its hubs in Bengaluru New Delhi and Kolkata AirAsia India is a joint venture between Tata Sons Limited and AirAsia with AirAsia Investment Limited AirAsia India commenced operations in June 2014 and currently flies to several cities in the domestic marketCatch up on all the latest Crime National International and Hatke news here Also download the new midday Android and iOS apps to get latest updatesThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever