Flybig is launching – But when will they actually take off?
In a news which will bring relief to the aviation fraternity in the subcontinent, the first green shoots of recovery from out of the pandemic are seen.
With the set up for UDAN to facilitate flight connections between Indian small cities, new airlines were scheduled to be launched with growth opportunities for aviation jobs. Flybig was to be launched in April this year but due to COVID-19 pandemic, it was delayed.
Now the airline plans to start operations by October 2020.
The airline will be connecting Tier 2 cities in the central Indian region in the initial phase.
The process to get Air Operator’s Certificate, or AoC is in the final stage.
The airline has already leased three ATR-72 aircraft and plans to lease another seven ATR-72s to reach a fleet of 10 aircraft for the next phases of rollout. The final plan will be to have 20 aircraft. As of now, the first aircraft is due to arrive in India by September. The airline will be based out of Indore. From Indore, the airline will connect to cities like Jabalpur, Bhopal and Raipur. Later it will expand to other destinations like Ahmedabad and Nagpur. In the second phase, destinations such as Rourkela, Lanjigarh, Ujjain, and Chhindwara are on the drawing board.
In the second phase, three aircraft at Varanasi and station another three aircraft in Guwahati. Since the international flights are likely to be restricted due to Covid-19, the domestic flights shall be operative early, and hence to gain experience it shall be easier to get selected on account of less competition with bigger scope for the future.
Flybig’s business plan is centred around the government’s UDAN scheme, which encourages establishing air connectivity in tier- 2 and 3 stories and town.
The scheme, which was launched in 2017, includes government support to operators in the form of Viability Gap Funding, to make these routes attractive enough for airlines. Nearly all domestic airlines had launched UDAN flights.
