AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

NT Bureau
Chennai, Mar 8:

        Low-cost carrier Air Deccan would have its new hangar commissioned by the end of April 2007 at an investment of $5 million. This drive-in hangar at the Chennai airport would have all composite shops for maintenance, repair and service of the aircraft and would become fully operational by June.

        Giving a perspective of civil aviation in the country, Warwick Brady, chief operating officer, Air Deccan, at a press conference here yesterday said there was a 50 per cent growth in market capacity in the last six months adding five lakh passenger seats. 'Since the arrival of Air Deccan, the industry is growing at 20-30 per annum, the fastest in the world. We have a market share of 21 per cent with over 300 daily flights connecting 61 destinations in the country,' Brady said.

        He was of view that low-cost carriers (LCCs) were behind the robust growth of civil aviation as they notched up a growth of 45 per cent as against legacy carriers posting over 10 per cent growth.

        Good mana-gement steam and a strong brand would further enable the airline to expand its market share in the growing demand for air travel in the domestic sector, he said. In a month's time, the daily flights would move up to 350 (from the present 306 flights) as more routes were being added to reach far-flung destinations across the country.

        Seven new flights would be added, including the services to Jodhpur, Udaipur, Dharamsala, Dimapur and Jamshedpur. On most of the sectors, the private carrier had a load factor of 80-85 per cent and in Tamilnadu, Air Deccan carried 23 per cent of the total passenger seats of the industry on an average day.

        In South, the airline connected 18 cities and towns with 42 daily services from Tamilnadu.

        From 26 March, daily services to Bhubhaneshwar and Agartala (via Kolkata) would be flagged off at Chennai airport, apart from one more flight to Madurai.

        The base station in Chennai set up two years back was taking care of fleet maintenance and services for southern operations. At present, base station has 3 ATR turboprops and 3 A-320s. As part of its expansion of fleet strength, Air Deccan would add four more A-320s and 8 ATRs which would take its total number of aircraft to 53 (23 Airbuses and 30 ATRs).

        To a query, Brady Warwick crticised the hike in peak-time landing charges for airlines and said the only way forward was to improve the infrastructure at airports and construct more runways in metros and towns. At present, most of the airports have not more than two runways which delayed the take-off and landing of fights in domestic terminals.

        He said Air Deccan would join hands with other airlines to represent their case against the hike in landing charges with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.