Low cost-turned-premium carrier, flydubai, aims to run 29 weekly flights between India and Dubai by March 2015, a top company official said.
The company, whose first flight on the Dubai-Mumbai route arrived in the city on Wednesday, currently offers 25 weekly connections to India.
“We will fully deploy our flying entitlements as per the bilateral agreement by March 2015. Going forward, we would either look at new routes or augment between Indian cities and Dubai,” Ghaith Al Gaith, Chief Executive Officer of flydubai said at a media interaction here on Wednesday.
In February, India and Dubai had agreed to liberalise their bilateral air services agreement, increasing the current 55,000 weekly seat entitlements for each side by approximately 20 per cent on a staged basis, to be implemented over the next 13 months.
Flydubai commenced operations to India in 2010. Currently, it operates services to cities such as Ahmedabad, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kochi, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram.
PricingFor the Mumbai leg, economy class return fares will start at ₹14,200 while business class fares will begin at ₹46,000, the company said in a statement.
“Our view is that Mumbai as a market is way underserved. Our first few flights on this sector are running at 80-90 per cent capacity,” said Sudhir Sreedharan, Senior Vice-President, Commercial Operations (India Sub-Continent/GCC/Africa).
Flydubai has a fleet of 41 next generation Boeing 737-800 aircraft and operates more than 1,000 flights to major destinations.