Pune on AirAsia's network, airline mulls expansion

PUNE: Jaipur has become the 12th domestic destination to figure on Pune's air map as low-cost carrier AirAsia launched its Pune-Jaipur flight on a low-key affair here on Wednesday. The new service is part of a hopping flight that originates from Bangalore to Pune and onwards to Jaipur. It also marks AirAsia's presence in the city.
"AirAsia is known to be a point-to-point carrier but, as we grow, we have deviated for the first time from our model by getting into a non point-to-point service," AirAsia India's chief executive officer Mittu Chandilya said during an interaction prior to the launch."Pune was always up there in our commercial plan," he said.
Expressing dissatisfaction over the time slots allotted to its flight at the airport, he said: "Ideally, people in our model love to do morning and evening flights to ensure return to their place of origin on the same day. We have taken the best available option considering the restrictions at Pune airport," he said.
As a latest entrant to the Indian aviation sector, AirAsia actively started operating commercial flights in May and has since established its presence at seven destinations, including Bangalore, Kochi, Chennai, Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur and Pune. "We will gradually open up new destinations although, our immediate focus remains on optimizing the existing ones as it is important that we continue to grow from existing stations," said Chandilya. Newer links like Pune-Chandigarh make sense and we will announce one more destination in near future, he added.
For now, AirAsia has a fleet of three A320 air buses with a passenger capacity of 180 seats each and is operating an average 200 flights per week. The airline has already started reporting operating profits on most of its existing routes with the exception of Bangalore-Chennai, said Chandilya. "Being a new carrier, our passenger load factor is high," he said, while pointing out that the maiden Bangalore-Pune flight carried 175 passengers as against the capacity of 180 seats and the situation was more or less the same for the Pune-Jaipur leg.
"We will be adding one more A320 aircraft by the end of this month and will continue to build on our fleet with 10 more aircrafts, all A320s, to add in the next one year," said Chandilya. "The total fleet would then be 14 A320 aircraft," he added. On the likelihood of starting services to international destinations, Chandilya said: "We would like to go international starting with stations within 4-hour radius like Bangkok, Singapore, Dubai where we have a strong presence."
He said, "As a new airline, it has been our conscious strategy to start simple and focus on cost and revenue. There are ways to ensure that the cost on inventories, head counts among others are kept low and we have to be stable and consistent with revenue despite temptations to get into newer areas." On fare pricing, he said, "There is no way an airline can sustain with pricing that is a gimmickry."