Private carrier Paramount Airways, which has a strong presence in South India, would enter the Western Indian skies by the end of this year and add 15 more aircraft to its kitty in the next three years.
Talking to visiting reporters here after the launch of Paramount’s fourth flight in the Chennai-Madurai sector last evening, company’s Managing Director M Thiagarajan said the airline would try to provide maximum number of services across the cities in the Western region.
Paramount Airways has added an additional flight between Madurai and Chennai, which is effective from February 26.
Introduced as an evening flight, it will leave Chennai at 16.00 hrs and reach Madurai at 16.55 hrs.
It will return from Madurai at 17.20 hrs and reach Chennai at 18.15 hrs.
Paramount Airways, promoted by the Madurai-based Paramount Group, has extended its services in the South with the launch of six additional flights effective February 7. The new sectors would be Bangalore-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bangalore, Chennai-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Chennai, Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam and Visakhapatnam-Hyderabad.
Paramount Airways will operate 10 new services, starting January 10, increasing its frequencies to major southern cities, according to a press release. The Chennai-based airline has grown from one destination and two flights to six destinations and 42 flights in one year. The airline has taken delivery of the second new generation Embraer jet.
The Chennai-based Paramount Airways plans to acquire 15 Embraer jets as part of its fleet expansion plans.
“As a premier service airline offering business class and first class comfort, Paramount Airways has almost saturated the routes in southern region with the present fleet of five Embraer jets and we already have an expansion plan to help the airline attain national character by 2009-10,” M. Thiagarajan, Managing Director of the airline, told a news conference at the Thiruvananthapuram airport on the occasion of the commencement of twice-daily services from Chennai.
Stating that providing more links to Kerala was close to his heart and the airline took pride in accomplishing it, Mr. Thiagarajan said the airline would soon offer “packages” to woo tourists. “We will soon come out with attractive packages under a tie-up with the hotel chains in the God’s Own Country,” Mr.Thiagarajan added.
Paramount Airways has started daily flights on the Thiruvananthapuram-Chennai sector from Friday.
Speaking at a press conference in the city today, Mr M. Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Paramount Airways, said the airline would operate two flights a day on this route.
The airline will also offer passengers from Thiruvananthapuram connecting flights to Hyderabad, Coimbatore and Bangalore via Chennai, he added.
India’s youngest domestic carrier Indigo Airlines has climbed to the third spot in capacity utilisation with a seat factor of 73.5% in October, the third month of its operation. SpiceJet continues to be at the top with a load factor of 77.3%, followed by Air Deccan at 76%.
According to the directorate general of civil aviation’s market share figures, October proved to be particularly beneficial to low cost carriers as the market share of SpiceJet, Go Air and Indigo increased from 6.8%, 2.5% and 1.9% in September this year to 7.1%, 3.4% and 3.5%, respectively, in October.
However, despite offering a large number of tickets at nominal prices of Rs 3 and Rs 6, India’s first low-cost carrier Air Deccan’s market share has actually been on the downslide. After touching a high of 21.2% in June, the airline’s share registered an average of 19.3% in the second quarter of the current financial year, further dropping to 18.1% in October.
The four low-cost airlines – Air Deccan, SpiceJet, Indigo Airline and Go Air — have together cornered a market share of 27.1 per cent during January-September this year, the latest data compiled by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation shows.
Jet Airways, however, continues to dominate the domestic market with a share of 32.8 per cent. The total number of passenger flown by the nine scheduled domestic airlines stood at 229.39 lakh.
The state-owned airline Indian that had a market share of 22.5 per cent was in second place followed by Air Deccan (17.9 per cent), Air Sahara (8.7 per cent) and Kingfisher Airlines (8.3 per cent).
It’s the season of major upheavals in the Indian skies. Riding on their low-fare strategy, the six-member club of new-entrants in the domestic skies has cornered a near 40% share of the airline industry pie in the third quarter of 2006 calendar year.
According to passenger carriage data with the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), new-entrants together captured 39.2% share of the domestic market in third quarter of 2006. In September, their combined share stood at 40.7% — their highest-ever till date.
The legacy carriers — Indian Airlines, Jet Airways and Air Sahara — ended with a 60.8% share in Q3, while their combined share in September alone dropped to 59.3%, the DGCA data revealed.
“Since the quarter to September is generally seen as a lean period, the no-frills airlines and some of the full-service carriers gained from the low-fare offerings. Since corporate movement is also generally low during this period, the legacy carriers have witnessed a dip in passenger carriage too and that’s reflecting on their market share,” said an industry watcher.
Paramount Airways, which has inducted its fifth Embraer aircraft, will be flying to three new destinations in the south – Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram and Tirupathi, taking the total number of destinations that the airline connects to 48, according to Mr M. Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Paramount Airways. The airline completed one year of operations last month and plans to add new routes to its network.
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