Vijay Mallya-promoted Kingfisher airlines is all set to expand its international network by flying on another four international routes in the next two months. Awaiting directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) nod, the premier air carrier expects to launch its first international flight out of Mumbai connecting Singapore, and soon after to Hong Kong, on a daily basis by third week of September.
Thereafter, Kingfisher will connect Mumbai to London in the second half of October.
The much-touted Silicon express connecting the IT hub of the east Bangalore to its counterpart in the west, San Francisco, is expected to start flying in the first week of November on a daily basis. While Airbus A330-200s will fly to South Asia, Airbus A340-500s will fly to the US and the UK.
Kingfisher?s international expansion plans come as good news for passengers. Within a day of Kingfisher launching its flights to London, old players with much experience in the international market, like Air India, Jet Airways, British Airwyas and Virgin Atlantic, slashed their fares. This slashing is expected for all the other international routes that the Bangalore-based airline flies on, analysts said.
Two days before Kingfisher Airlines launched its Bangalore-London daily flight, British Airways slashed its base fare from Rs 24,150 to Rs 9,990. Soon after, Virgin Atlantic brought down its base fare on the Mumbai-London sector to Rs 9,990 for some flights where the average base fare for a return flight to London was Rs 23,000.
Kingfisher Airlines has also introduced low fares at various levels. The discounted fare for the airlines comes is approximately Rs 10,990 (without taxes), which was Rs 18,730 earlier.
In response to Kingfisher announcing plans to enter the Singapore market, Singapore airlines (SIA) has got additional flights, upped the discount level and increased its marketing spends for the India Singapore routes. Also, SIA is planning to fly larger aircraft on the route, sources said. At present, SIA now has 14 flights a week from Delhi to Singapore and offers discounts between 33% and 66% on return economy fares on its new flights.
As part of its plans to start international flights erstwhile Simplifly Deccan, on whose licence Kingfisher is flying abroad, had applied for permission to fly to cities in the US, the UK, UAE, Singapore, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Thailand, Maldives, Pakistan and Hong Kong.
Due to a downturn in the aviation market, the UB group-promoted airline is not going to launch flights to all these destinations as it had planned earlier.