Air India hopes more planes will get it more market share

National carrier Air India expects the 40 odd new airplanes that it plans to induct over the next two years would help regain lost market share in the domestic market against private players such as IndiGo and Spicejet.

It plans fresh orders of 10 Airbus 320 aircraft to increase capacity, in addition to the 30 aircraft from the European plane maker it has placed orders with.

Ashwin Lohani, chairman and managing director of Air India, said: "On the domestic side we have not been able to add capacity till now. In the next one year there is going to be huge induction in domestic capacity by us. Today we have 55 aircraft and connect 68 domestic destination, where as our nearest competition has 100 aircraft connecting just 38 destinations. With fleet expansion will have much more coverage and capacity. We will regain our market share."

Air India, once a dominant player in India's aviation market has a 16% share in carrying passengers as on June. It had reported losses of Rs 246 crore for the June quarter.

The carrier reported operating profit of Rs 100-110 crore in the last financial year due to lower fuel costs.

"The mantra we have to achieve sustained profitability for the airline is fill more and fly more," said Lohani.

Lohani said that the airlines market share in domestic sector has gone down and this was because all the private carriers like IndiGo, Go Air were continuously adding capacity.

Air India has already ordered 29-A320 and will likely to order another 10 more aircrafts. In total, the airline will increase it's fleet size by 30 to 40 in the next two to three years.

Domestic travel has been increasing by 20% in the country, Lohani said that the same trend is likely to continue and the airline has to be prepared.

Along with the domestic sector the airline is also increasing routes in the international sector.

In the last one year, the airline has introduced four new international routes and the coming year it will increase it to six more international routes.

"The focus is on the US, Europe, Singapore, Australia and Bangkok. With direct non stop flights," said Lohani.

The airline had initially ordered 27 dreamliners of which only 21 have joined the fleet. There are six more dreamliners that will join the fleet in the next one year. Besides, this the airline have also three 777 that we have already ordered. So, totally there will be 9 new aircrafts joining the fleet in the next one year and few for the international sector.

Lohani claimed that while the airline is moving towards profitability, he can not provide an exact timeline on when they will be completely profitable.

"The airline business is a highly dynamic business. There is no timeline I can't put for when we will be profitability, however, we will put in our best and wait for the results. The ticket prices are decided by the market, we do not want the yields to fall but they are falling," he said.