Air Deccan, India's first low-cost airline company is resuming sales of its popular Rs 500 Dynafare category in the next four to five days. This will be for ticket sales for a six-month period between March 31 and September 31, 2005.
"We will be extending the Dynafare offer to new flights launched such as those in the Chennai-Mumbai and Delhi-Chennai circuits. Going forward we want to avoid the misuse of our low-cost fares by travel agents who might book it in bulk," said Captain Gopinath, managing director, Air Deccan. It has sold 55,000 of the Rs 500 tickets so far, which translates to about Rs 4 crore (Rs 40 million) inclusive of taxes.
The airline had stopped sales of the Dynafare tickets a few weeks back after it had sold out the Rs 500 category up to March 31, 2005 on the present flights available in the Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore sectors.
The Air Deccan website and call centre have been swamped with bookings under Dynafare, which has to be done 90 days in advance. Air Deccan also plans to increase the number of its flights from 70 at present to more than 110 by the end of this fiscal. These flights would include a fleet of ATRs and Airbus 320s.
Currently Air Deccan has three A320s and seven ATRs, it has already placed orders for another 11 A320s and five ATRs.
"There are also 120,000 tickets available in a year at an average price of Rs 1,800 on each of our A320s," added Capt Gopinath.
The top end fares of the airline are pegged at 70 per cent of the regular fares of most other commercial airlines. The airline expects to clock revenues of $125 million by March, 2005 and fly close to 2 million passengers.
