Air India intends to have its carriers put in more flying hours as part of the ailing carrier’s revised turnaround strategy. Civil aviation officials said the national carrier’s revival plan had to be reworked because its financial position was worse than previously envisaged. The turnaround plan will also focus on the maximum utilisation of other resources and cut down on unnecessary purchases.
“We have a good fleet of aircraft. It is just that they are underutilised. In the turnaround plan, we will ensure that every aircraft, be it a wide-bodied or an ATR, are utilised properly and to their optimum efficiency,” said a senior Civil Aviation Ministry official.
According to ministry officials, some of the routes of Air India are shorter and, hence, the number of flying hours are less. According to a report by Karan Choudhury in The Telegraph, the average daily flying hours of the A-310 and the A-320 are 6.4 hours and 10.8 hours, respectively, compared with private carriers such as Jet Airways (12.20 hours), Kingfisher (10.45 hours), Spice- Jet (12 hours),GoAir(13 hours) and IndiGo (11.40 hours).
V Narayanasamy, Minister of State, PMO, Govt. of India, said the government would soon come out with a package for the maximum utilisation of aircraft that were flying for lesser hours. A group of ministers (GoM) headed by Pranab Mukherjee, , Govt. of India is looking to boost revenues by Rs 5,000 crore per annum through capacity expansion and slashing costs by Rs 4,000 crore per annum, making the airline operationally profitable by 2015.