Air India has shown interest in acquiring some of the self check-in kiosks of Kingfisher Airlines at the city’s domestic airport, weeks after private carrier Jet sought to take over some of the international and domestic routes of KFA, say airport sources.
“Since Kingfisher Airlines is no longer operating, Air India has evinced interest in acquiring a few of its kiosks,” sources at Mumbai airport told PTI.
Air India is negotiating for taking over six of the 18 kiosks lying unused due to the grounding of Vijay Mallya’s airline in October last year.
Air India and Kingfisher had been equally using the 36 self check-in kiosks at the Terminal A. “Of these 18 vacant kiosks, Air India is negotiating with the airport operator to take over six,” they said, adding that other airlines are also looking at a few of them.
No-frills carrier GoAir, along with a few other carriers, is reportedly in negotiations with the airport authorities for shifting its operations from Terminal B to Terminal A with an eye on the Kingfisher office space.
Soon after the government had said in February that it was withdrawing both the domestic slots as well as the international flying rights of Kingfisher, Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways had approached the aviation ministry to buy six of them—four domestic and two international—from Mumbai.
Besides operating on domestic routes, Kingfisher used to operate 35 weekly flights to Sri Lanka, 21 each weekly flights to the UAE and Thailand, 14 each weekly flights to Bangladesh and Hong Kong and seven each to Singapore, Britain and Nepal.