Kingfisher Airlines is likely to commence international operations from August. It will initially start its operations to destinations like San Francisco, London, New York from the Bangalore Airport.

Some more destinations will be added later, according to Siva Ramachandran, vice-president (global sales), Kingfisher Airlines, who was in the city to launch the inaugural service from Chandigarh.

The company on Monday launched daily direct services from Chandigarh to Mumbai.

"By the end of this financial year, we would add launch our services to around 20 international destinations. We would start flights from India to three locations in European countries, six in the Gulf region, four in the Far East and seven in SAARC countries by FY09-end."

Initially, it would start flights to destinations like San Francisco, London, New York from Bangalore. It plans to commence the Mumbai-London flight by August.  

Besides the Chandigarh-Mumbai direct flight, the airline today commenced services on five other routes as well. For the first time, it offers a daily direct flight between New Delhi and Goa.

It has also added one more daily direct flight between New Delhi and Hyderabad, taking the total number of daily flights on that route to three flights a day. It also launched a daily flight from Mumbai to Ahmedabad and has commenced flights between Chennai and Coimbatore.

"We are eyeing a growth rate of 20 per cent from non-metro cities and 12 per cent growth from metro by FY09-end." He added that metros like New Delhi and Mumbai were almost saturated.

"That's why we are expecting low growth as compared with non-metros, which are coming up in big way."