Kingfisher Airlines is planning to fly to at least nine global destinations from different cities in India by the end of this year. The airliner launched daily flights on the Chennai-Colombo and Bangalore-Colombo routes on Monday.The Union civil aviation ministry has permitted the airlines to commence operations to seven more international destinations including Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Bangkok, Dhaka and countries in West Asia. After deferring its over seas expansions for a while, Kingfisher launched its services between Mumbai and London early this month. The Colombo route launch on Monday will be followed by flights to Dubai in March.
Kingfisher will mostly deploy narrowbody aircraft for the new routes. A few months back, Kingfisher announced that it would reduce capacity. And it has already effected a reduction of about 4 per cent in its carrying capacity. And it plans to shed eight more aircraft during the course of this year. Kingfisher has a fleet of 87 aircraft and connects 73 cities with 442 flights a day.
“We will venture into destinations that will make good business sense despite the general economic slowdown,” said Siva Ramachandran, vice president for global sales, Kingfisher Airlines. “We hope to achieve seat factor of over 70 per cent on all our international flights. This will help us to breakeven as fast as possible.” The inaugural flight to Colombo from Chennai had more than 80 per cent seats filled. Kingfisher has partnered with Aitken Spence, one of the island nation’s largest conglomerates, for domestic stay and travel facilities for its customers.