By Vaibhav Agrawal
As part of a vast expansion plan over the next five years, The Air India Express is looking forward to more international connections from second and third-tier cities.
Maintaining the strategy of offering inter-regional routes within a six-hour stage length, the LCC intends to rapidly grow its network under the new owner, Tata Group, says Tara Naidu, Chief of Commercial.
Naidu has outlined around 30 countries which Air India is exploring, including Turkey, Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia, the Philippines and China.
She said, “There are some markets where there is no direct connectivity, which is strange because they are huge markets,”. We believe it will be a win-win for us—it will stimulate tourism growth in both directions and ease business connectivity.”
Currently, Air India Express serves 14 international points and 19 destinations in India, with aircraft bases at Thiruvananthapuram (TVR), Kozhikode (CCJ), Tiruchchirappalli (TRZ), Cochin (COK), Delhi (DEL), Mumbai (BOM), and Mangalore (IXE).
Air India Express flies high-density point-to-point routes, unlike its parent Air India, which operates a hub-and-spoke network and targets markets with large flows of migrant workers and leisure and VFR traffic. Muscat, Sharjah and Dubai are among its most prominent international destinations by capacity.