Aviation future belongs to regional airlines — Expert

There are many areas where regional services can operate profitably, he said denying reports that some regional airlines failed to survive in the recent years due to non-availability of passengers on the feeder routes. He said airline business was very capital intensive and many private entrepreneurs, who had jumped into the field in the early years of deregulation of the domestic sector when a lot of excitement prevailed, had failed to survive due to lack of investment, experience, ageing aircraft and not having proper maintenance and other necessary facilities. Regarding Vayoodut, he said it could not survive because it was not run seriously.

Gupta said there were many areas in all the four regions of the country where regional air services could be operated profitably. In Uttar Pradesh alone there were more than dozen places which could be served by regional airlines. He said many areas, where Indian Airlines operated 737 aircrafts, could be served with smaller aircraft.

He said turbo prop aircraft were suitable for operating on regional routes and he had already made a proposal to the Cabinet on this line which had also accepted. “I don’t say Indian Airlines should buy turbo prop but Alliace Air should buy,” he said, adding that it was in use in many countries and some of the private airlines in India were going in for the aircraft.

Gupta, who is also chairman of Air India, held discussion with departmental heads of the national carrier and said the focus of his discussion was on how to achieve increased use of information technology (IT).

He had asked all departments of Air India to come out with their plans which could be effectively used to improve administrative and operational efficiency. Information technology was in use in Air India but there was far more to be done. It could be used with greater effect to improve passenger movement, ground and inflight services, cargo handling and human resource management. Use of information technology also reduced cost and immensely contributes to efficiency, he added.

He said all the plans would be implemented with the thrust on improving customer service. The emphasis was on imbibing the culture to treat the customer as `the king’.