GoAir steps up its fleet acquisition from 28 to 33 by 2008: Jeh

Mumbai, Mar 07 (UNI) GoAir, a Wadia Group company, launched in November last year with 3 A-320 aircraft, will continue its expansion through an acquisition of an additional 33 A-320 family aircraft.

The fleet acquisition is spaced over three year span, funded through five different baskets of investments, GoAir Managing Director Jeh Wadia told reporters here today.

Elaborating on its plans, Mr Wadia said one is to go for dry lease for short term, other baskets envisage acquisition of new aircrafts on both short term as well as long term, besides leasing new and old aircrafts for long terms.

In the first year, Mr Wadia said the company wants to induct eight aircraft, followed by 10 and 15 aircraft in the second and third year respectively.

However, the company is still to decide the composition of its fleet acquisition, how much on dry lease and how much to be acquired, he said.

Earlier, it had decided to procure 20 aircraft through acquisition route for a consideration of USD 1.2 Billion (Rs 5,300 crore), but plan now stands revised to a total of 33 aircraft, he said.

The additional aircraft will allow it to expand aggressively into the North Indian and Metro-to-Metro flight routes, Mr Wadia said.

Currently, GoAir operates three Airbus A320s with 20 flights covering 11 cities-- Mumbai, Goa, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Vadodara, Chennai, Pune, Cochin and Jaipur.

From April 13, the airline will cover 14 cities including Delhi Srinagar and Jammu with a total of 28 daily flights, he added.

Mr Wadia announced the airline's new campaign ''The GoAir Challenge'' aimed at the growing passenger loads of all airlines in India.

Explaining, Mr Wadia said ''If the price paid for the ticket bought on a competing airline is lower than the price paid for the GoAir ticket, then the airlines will adjust double the difference between the fare of the GoAir ticket sold and the fare of the other airline as credit which can be used to purchase GoAir tickets.'' In effect, he said ''GoAir will also reimburse the cost of cancellation done immediately of the other airline's ticket as credit which can be used to purchase GoAir tickets.'' UNI SN-JM KD AG1727