In a first,Air India to use jumbo aircraft for metro routes

Post-strike,the move will likely ramp up revenues

The ten-day strike at the state-owned Air India holds a new lesson for the airline,and one which could perhaps change the way passengers currently fly on some of the key domestic routes. The airline,having experimented with the model during the strike as a contingency move,plans to operate twin aisle wide-body aircraft,similar to ones used on international sector,on the high density trunk routes,said senior airline sources.

Air India may turn out to be the first one to deploy wide-body aircraft on the domestic sector. The move will be a game changer in the domestic market, said the source. To begin with,at least two wide-body Airbus A-330s will be deployed with onward connections to foreign locales like Singapore,Dubai and Bangkok. The move will help airline to ramp up its operations revenues, said the sources. The operations of wide-body aircraft,which can carry up to 290 fliers each,are likely to be finalised in two weeks.

During the strike the airline had deployed two twin-aisled Airbus A-330s on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi- Bangalore-Chennai sectors. We plan to continue with this and provide further connections to the Gulf or Southeast Asia. We want to integrate Dubai,Singapore,Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur with our domestic network, the source said,adding that the A-330s would operate only as a breakfast or dinner flight. During the strike,even though its domestic flights reduced to 40 from around 165,it was able to offer 12,000 seats daily as it had deployed bigger planes.

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Post the strike,the airline will evaluate its domestic operations,and recover those routes first which are profitable.

While the airline will continue to offer 35,000 seats daily on the domestic sector,it will reduce the number of narrow-body aircraft with a seating capacity of 140-160 each. At the same time,it will be adding ten to 15 tier II cities like Patna,Ranchi,Kanpur,Raipur on its map by connecting them to metros. Instead of Delhi-Kanpur- Delhi or Delhi-Patna-Ranchi-Delhi,AI is exploring routes like Delhi-Kanpur-Kolkata or Delhi-Patna-Kolkata or Delhi-Ranchi-Kolkata.

Meanwhile,the airline sources said they will continue to offer low fares on advance bookings to earn maximum revenues from each flight.

While a single flight earns an average of Rs two lakh,if more seats are available for lower fares our revenues can go up to even Rs three lakh per trip”,the sources said. The average cost of a trip of about Rs 1.75 lakh would remain the same.

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The proposed move would also meet fulfill one of the decisions arrived at in the talks between the agitating pilots and the government that brought the strike to an end. The management had agreed that it would look into increasing flying hours of its pilots on the domestic network.

In the video aired on regional news channels, Pawar purportedly speaks to Anjana Krishna, sub-divisional police officer, Karmala, from the phone of an NCP worker. (Express Photo by Narendra Vaskar)

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