Low cost airline next year
AIR India Express (AIE), the low cost airline operated by Air India, will be introduced in Bahrain next summer and not this October as previously announced, said a senior official.
“There is no question of AIE coming to Bahrain before the next summer season,” Dubai-based Regional Director (Gulf) for Air-India Sanjeev Talwar told the GDN.
He cited the shortage of aircraft and ‘diversion of planes to other lucrative routes’ as the reason behind the move.
“As much as we would want more and more destinations to be covered by the budget arm of Air-India, this is not possible in the immediate future.”
The airline was first expected to fly in to Bahrain in April last year when it was reported the first flight would land only in winter.
This schedule was again revised to happen with the advent of the summer this year.
“After it failed to meet this year’s summer deadline, we had been reasonably sure it would finally happen in October to coincide with the winter schedule,” said Air India’s manager for Bahrain and Jordan M N Naik.
“This is also apparently not happening now.”
Meanwhile, an Air India official, speaking from Mumbai, told the GDN that Mumbai and Delhi might not even be connected from Bahrain even after the AIE starts operations, possibly in the summer of next year.
“The routes are simply not profitable and we will concentrate only on the South Indian market (Kerala) because that is where the loads are,” said the official.
He said while Air India Express flights from points in Kerala to Dubai and Abu Dhabi, among other destinations in the Gulf, had a load factor of more than 90 per cent, those from Delhi and Mumbai to the same destinations had reported less than 50pc.
“The same, we expect, will be from Bahrain,” said the official.
AIE began services last year, and flies to Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Muscat, and Salalah, from Kozhikode, Kochi, Thiruvananthapuram, Mumbai, Delhi, Amritsar and Mangalore.