Aeroflot to expand India operations
18 Apr 2007
The airline also wants to increase the number of weekly flights to the two gateway airports of Delhi and Mumbai, if the Indian government permits.
It plans to increase its flights to Delhi to 12 a week from seven and those to Mumbai to seven a week from four. With 70 per cent of its seats filled up on an average day, Aeroflot feels it could turn India into one of its 'milk cow' routes.
Igor V. Iveliev, general manager of Aeroflot, said the airline was interested in Kolkata because of its immense growth potential and the traffic in the eastern market. Overall the airline would like to increase the total number of flights from India to 30.
Aeroflot was weighing the option of operating flights between Amritsar and Moscow in order to cater to the rising demand of people from Punjab traveling to Europe, Canada and the US.
Aeroflot was also planning to expand its fleet and improve its services. To begin with, it will include 10 more Airbus 330 aircraft to its fleet and gradually increase fleet size from 90 to 400.
The nearly 50-year-old airline flies passengers to 47 countries, including 34 destinations in Russia and 59 in other parts of the world.
Aeroflot ranks India amongst the top 10 in the global aviation market. Iveliev said that the Indo-Russia airline market has been growing at an average of 20-25 per cent over the past four years.
