AI may cut business class seats on domestic flights

Mumbai: Air India may reduce business class seats and add more economy seating in its Airbus A320 planes because of poor loads in its premium segment. The government-owned airline has 63 narrow body planes from Airbus, including the A319 and A321.
AI chairman Rohit Nandan has appointed a committee to examine issues related to aircraft reconfiguration and to study occupancy patterns and demand. The report would come in a week, Nandan said.
Kingfisher had recently announced a reconfiguration of its planes. And, for the past year, Jet Airways has been flying 60-70 per cent of its domestic routes with the no-frills Konnect brand.
About 50 of AI's narrow body planes have business class seats. An Airbus A319 has eight business seats and the A320 and A321 have 20 each. The argument for dropping some business class seats in favour of economy seating is because AI’s domestic flights have low occupancy at the front end.
"While the load in business class is 50 per cent on the metro routes, the overall loads in business class are 35- 40 per cent. An aircraft flies 8-10 hours daily and it does not make much sense to have business class full in only one of the flights,'' an AI source said. Overall, AI had loads of 72 per cent in October, among the lowest in the industry.
Along with reducing business class seats in domestic flights, AI officials are also considering doing away with first class seats on the Boeing 777 planes, used on the long-haul international routes to US, UK, Canada and Japan. These have four to eight first class seats and have less than 25 per cent loads. The first class seats may be replaced with additional business class seats on the Boeing 777.
22/11/11 Aneesh Phadnis/Business Standard

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Categories: Air India Nov 2011