Kingfisher, Deccan to prune flights

Bangalore: Kingfisher Airlines and Simplifly Deccan, part of the UB Group, have slashed over 10 per cent of their total daily flights while Deccan’s 47 expat engineers are being sent back home.
Sources in the UB group told Business Line that because of rising aviation turbine fuel prices as well as over capacity in certain sectors, both had decided to cut down on the number of flights.
Sources said both the airlines fly a total of 550 flights every day and out of that, about 28 flights from each of these airlines have been taken off the schedule across the country. Kingfisher Airlines will, however, go ahead with its plans to fly international routes from August this year.
When contacted, a UB Group spokesperson said it was part of the off-season exercise. “As we approach the off-season, on some sectors where there are multiple flights operating in a day and we find that the loads can be handled by fewer flights, we would explore the option of reducing the frequency of flights in the interest of optimal network planning,” he said.
He did not say how much would both the airlines save because of this exercise. Apart from this new cost reduction plans, the operational synergies between the two airlines are expected to lead to a benefit of about Rs 250 crore.
23/06/08 K. Giriprakash/Business Line

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Categories: Deccan Jun 2008, Kingfisher Jun 2008