Air India Express to focus on existing routes and leisure travel market

Last week Air India showcased its new livery, and has changed their website as well as their mobile application to the same.

The aircraft used to showcase the new livery was a Boeing 737 MAX, and soon afterwards another Airbus 320 belonging to AirAsia India was also painted in new AIX livery and ferried to Bengaluru from Hosur, India.

AIX focus on existing routes

Speaking about the airline’s plan for future and routes Air India Express managing director Mr. Aloke Singh, said that airline will mainly focus on its existing routes, and that airline will not plan immediate expansion across nation.

Mr. Singh told PTI “The focus of Air India Express will be on routes which have a higher component of leisure travellers, a higher component of price-sensitive customers.

In fact, more of non-business while Air India will focus primarily on routes which are higher yielding, which requires business class and a higher level of in-flight services.”

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“We are not looking at spreading our capacity all over the country right of the back. We will first consolidate our presence on the routes where we are already operating, get to a meaningful scale there and then start looking at other markets. So, this is the broad thinking for our networks”.

Air India Express along with Air India and Vistara is owned by Tata Group, who have now merged Air India Express and AirAsia India into AIX – making it the low-cost arm of Air India.

Eventually Air India and Vistara, a joint venture of Singapore International Airline and Tata Group, will be merged into one single entity and Vistara as a brand will cease to exist.

Strategic route scheduling

Mr.Singh confirmed that Air India Express would focus on price sensitive markets where Air India doesn’t operate. The airline will steer clear on certain routes which have high yield passengers and require “Business class”.

He also emphasised on the need of rationalising the network of airlines under Tata Group. They will also ensure that flight operations of one of their subsidiary airlines will not clash with other on same sector where the latter might have had a strong hold.

Hence, AIX as of now has no plans to operate on such routes, prime example being Mumbai (BOM) – Delhi (DEL) sector. AIX has no direct flight on this sector; instead AIX operate on this route by offering a flight which has a stopover at Jaipur.

It is also important to know that Air Asia India used to operate direct flights on this same sector.

Codesharing agreement

Mr. Aloke Singh also mentioned that despite of this division of the routes the airline will not be losing out on passengers.

This us due to a codeshare agreement with Air India which will help passenger connect with the robust network of their parent airline Air India on domestic as well as International routes seamlessly.

He explained, for example a passenger of Air India from London wants to travel to Surat, Air India can now sell Itinerary to the passenger on an Air India coded flight, in which the first leg of the flight from London will be operated by Air India and the second leg will be operated by AIX. 

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