Budget airlines eye non-metros cities for expansion

New Delhi: With the budget airlines’ hectic fleet expansion activities, the booming civil aviation sector is flying off to a new high.
Billed as one of the biggest investments in recent times, the budget carriers have lined up capacity expansion plans worth billions of dollars to beef up their domestic flights, particularly to non-metro cities where they see higher growth prospects. In fact the process of acquiring new aircraft started couple of years back.
According to industry sources, about half-a-dozen low-cost airlines currently have an order book of close to 250 aircraft placed with Airbus, Boeing and other plane manufacturers. These include a 100-aircraft order worth about $6 billion by Indigo, orders for 41 aircraft by GoAir and 90 by Air Deccan.
Considering the list price of about $70 million for an A320, one of the most popular aircraft with the budget airlines, the planned expansion would cost the carriers $15 billion.
The planned capacity addition by low-cost airlines is considerably higher than that of full-service carriers, whose order books currently stand at about 120-130 aircraft. Besides, while most of the planned capacity addition by full-service carriers such as Jet Airways and Kingfisher is for overseas flights that of budget airlines are mainly for domestic operations, and that too for non-metro routes.
03/01/08 Raja Awasthi/Economic Times

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Categories: airports Feb 2008, Indian Aviation- In General Feb 2008, Low Cost General Feb 2008