Star Air in talks with Brazil’s Embraer to buy aircraft
- Star Air plans to deploy the new aircraft on 22 routes the airline won during the RCS auctions
- Airline’s CEO Simran Singh Tiwana says the aircraft purchases will be funded internally
Bengaluru: India’s newest scheduled airline, Star Air, which operates under the government-sponsored regional connectivity scheme (RCS), is likely to announce in a fortnight an aircraft order with Brazil’s Embraer, the airline’s chief executive said.
Bengaluru-based Star Air, which has two 50-seater Embraer ERJ 145s, plans to deploy the new planes on 22 routes it had won during the RCS auctions, Simran Singh Tiwana said on Thursday.
Tiwana, who did not specify the size of the potential order, said the purchases will be funded internally.
Star Air, which is owned by the Sanjay Ghodawat Group, is also in talks with the authorities at Mumbai airport to start flights from the city.
“We are trying to get some slots in bigger airports. We are trying to get at least one slot in Mumbai,” Tiwana said.
Star Air began services in late January and connects Bengaluru and Hubli, as well as Hubli and Tirupati.
The carrier will begin flights on the Bengaluru-Belgaum sector on 25 February. It also plans to start flights on the Belgaum-Jaipur and Belgaum-Jodhpur routes in the near future.
“We don’t want to compete with bigger players,” Tiwana said. In future, 90% of the airline’s operations will be under the RCS routes where the airline is eligible to receive viability gap funding from the government, he said.
“Our target is to monopolize these routes (under RCS),” Tiwana said.
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First Published:21 Feb 2019, 11:00 PM IST
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