In February 12, Gurgaon-based Zoom Air became the tenth scheduled carrier to join the bandwagon of India’s domestic aviation companies. It is launching daily operations on the Delhi-Kolkata-Durgapur-Delhi sector. Zoom Air will add on a flight to Amritsar in the afternoon, followed by a Delhi-Surat-Bhavnagar-Delhi evening service.
Sounds ambitious? Not really! Koustav M. Dhar, CEO and director of Zoom Air, is confident of his business plan. “We will fill the gap of sectors, which are less catered to by other scheduled airlines,” says he. Others in the list include Air India, Air India Express, Jet Airways, Jetlite, Indigo, Spicejet, GoAir, Vistara and Air Asia-India.
Zoom Air (licenced as Zexus Air Services) now has three CRJ-200LR aircraft under dry lease (an arrangement covering hiring of an aircraft without a flight crew) from CRJ Aircraft Leasing, Dublin. Two of the aircraft on dry lease have been imported. Zoom Air has also acquired two similar CRJ-200LR aircraft from Skyone Aircraft leasing, UAE, under dry lease that will join its fleet by April 2017. The new acquisitions will fulfil the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) condition that airlines acquire a fleet of at least five aircraft within a year.
For the record, between them, the scheduled operators have carried around 100 million passengers in the 2016 calendar year, growing at a pace of 20 per cent and more each month.
The volume of domestic traffic has virtually doubled over the past six years, leading to a struggle for parking bays, longer waiting period for taking off and landing and more chaos at some airports.
Of late, the DGCA’s monthly reports have reflected growing congestion and chaos, particularly across the four major airports. All airlines, from market leader IndiGo, to SpiceJet, GoAir, Air India and Jet Airways, have reported delays.
In December, SpiceJet was able to maintain an average On Time Performance (OTP) of 70 per cent across Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Hyderabad. Air India fared the worst, with 40 per cent delayed flights. Other airlines fared only marginally better, with every third flight being delayed.
Over the next 18 months, at least 60 narrow bodies and a dozen regional aircraft will be inducted by various airlines. This raises some serious questions for the business itself. Who is responsible for creating additional parking bays, newer airports and better passenger facilities? And will relevant infrastructure match prevailing growth levels?
BW Reporters
Ashish Sinha is an experienced business journalist who has covered FMCG, auto, infrastructure, tourism, telecom among several other beats. Ashish has keen interest in the regulatory scenario impacting different sectors. He writes on aviation, railways, post and telegraph, infrastructure, defence, media & entertainment, among a wide variety of other subjects.
