Tata-Singapore Airlines plans to launch services from Sept

Airline to connect Delhi with Mumbai, Bangalore, Goa, Srinagar and five other cities

Tata-Singapore Airlines plans to launch its services in the country from September, with 87 weekly flights in the first year of operations, the airline has said in its application to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for an air operator’s permit. These flights will link Delhi with Mumbai, Goa, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Jammu, Srinagar, Patna and Chandigarh.

DGCA on Thursday issued a public notice seeking suggestions and objections to grant of permit to the airline company, which is facing a legal challenge with Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy impleading it in a writ petition in the Delhi High Court.

The country’s largest domestic airline, IndiGo, currently operates 494 daily flights, while GoAir, the smallest, has 120 daily flights. By comparison, Tata-SIA will in the first year have 12 daily flights and a thrice-a-week flight.

A spokesperson for the airline refused to comment.

The airline’s application says it will use Airbus A320 and A320 Neo planes, which are being taken on dry lease from Wilmington Trust SP Services (Dublin) Ltd for six and 12 years, respectively. The carrier’s operations and maintenance base will be in Delhi. All flights, including linked ones, will originate from Delhi and all aircraft will return to Delhi for night halt, the application says.

The application also lists the airline’s “proposed route patterns” over the next four years. Its actual schedules might vary when it starts operations. In the second year, the airline will nearly double the number of flights to 168 a week, adding flights to Chennai, Lucknow, Pune, Varanasi, Jaipur, Gauwahati and Kolkata. It will add flights to Amritsar, Bagdogra, Indore in the third year and to Kochi in the fourth.

Tata-Singapore Airlines will gradually increase the services between Mumbai and Delhi from twice daily in the first two years to five times a day in the third, and seven times a day in the fourth. That means, there will be 49 weekly flights between the two cities. Delhi-Bangalore will have four flights in the fourth year, while Delhi-Hyderabad and Delhi-Ahemdabad-Mumbai will be linked thrice daily.

In the third and fourth years, the number of flights will increase to 252 a week and 301 a week, respectively.