BackGoAir to expand services in South, North India
GoAir to expand services in South, North India
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New Delhi: Aiming at almost doubling its fleet size by the end of this year, Wadia group airline GoAir today announced expanding its services to the South and North India from next week.
Adding Amritsar, Chandigarh and Bangalore in the summer schedule of its eight destination network effective from March-end, the no-frill carrier said it had recently started providing business class facilities, with free food and better seating arrangements, at “economy fare" rates.
The low cost carrier also plans to raise $400 million, or Rs2,000 crore this year and separately expand its fleet size to 10 planes and launch new routes in 2009, a company official said.
Edgardo Badiali, chief executive, GoAir said the airline plans to phase out some of its old aircraft from its eight-aircraft fleet, inducting four new planes from Airbus SAS, and ending 2009 with 10 Airbus-made A320 passenger jets.
The $400 million funding will be for 10 planes on order from Airbus that will join between 2011 and 2012. “There is till some time to arrange funding but we have various options - financing from sales and lease back, directly from banks," Badiali said. Funding for planes joining this year has been completed, he said.
GoAir added three new destinations including Amritsar, Bangalore and Chandigarh the airline flies to.
Dismissing reports of the airline’s merger with SpiceJet as “rumours", Badiali told reporters that “it is one of the many rumours doing rounds in the industry."
Maintaining that GoAir was about to conclude its efforts to replace leased aircraft with brand new ones, he said the last of the leased Airbus A-320 would fly back later this week with the induction of two new aircrafts by June and two more in November and December this year.
This would take its fleet strength from six to ten by the year-end.
Observing that the three new destinations would take the total number of cities it connected to 11, Badiali said with the new connections, the total flights each week would go up to 474 from 248 at present.
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