Air Costa, the south Indian regional airline run by Air Costa Aviation Pvt. Ltd, has secured a no-objection certificate (NoC) from the ministry of civil aviation for pan-India operations.
Vivek Choudhary, deputy chief executive officer at Air Costa, said: “We shall also be adding an E190 (110 seater) this month to our fleet. This followed by an addition in February 2016 shall take our fleet to 5 aircraft followed by further additions in 2016. Pan-India operations shall commence from the summer schedule 2016."
The airline, promoted by Vijayawada-based construction firm LEPL Group currently runs 32 daily flights linking nine cities such Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Tirupati, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada.
Air Costa, which started its operations two years ago, currently holds a market share of 1 per cent in domestic traffic.
Ramesh Lingamaneni, Chairman, said: “Air Costa is a two-year young airline having celebrated its second anniversary in October 2015. From operating two Embraer aircraft to five destinations with 300 employees in a year’s time, we have doubled ourselves to four aircraft serving 9 destinations with close to 800 employees. This is a formidable step in the journey of Air Costa towards being a sustainable airline in India. This is also a testimony to the efforts of all members of the Air Costa family.”
“Since many of our metros were near saturation, we believed that the next big growth wave was going to come from the developing cities. Our vision was to the tap the burgeoning and promising tier II market by stimulating growth through better air connectivity to the tier I cities. Our choice of Embraer aircraft (existing two E170 with 67 seats, two E190 with 112 seats and two newly inducting flights with 110 seats) perfectly complemented this vision of ours," he added.
BW Reporters
The author is Senior Correspondent with BW Businessworld
