We want to double our service but regulations aren't allowing: Scoot's India head

This October onwards, the Singapore Airlines-owned carrier will start operating its new route of Jaipur to Singapore

Scoot Airline, low-cost and medium-haul arm of Singapore Airlines (SIA), has said that it is ready to double it flights between Indian cities and Singapore, but regulation in India is not allowing them to expand.

The airline said that it will start its service from Jaipur to Singapore from October this year, but it has identified many more cities in India, where the demand is high.

The airline claims that average load factor is around 90 per cent and it is seeing more demand and it is right time for the government to change its policy and be more liberal.

In May, SIA moved one step closer to merging short haul LCC Tigerair and medium/long haul LCC Scoot by creating a new holding company for its two budget airline subsidiaries. Scoot and Tigerair will remain separate airlines for now, with their own operator certificates, but will have a new joint management team.

The two airlines are now operating 46 flights a week in India.

Bharat Mahadevan, country head, India, Scoot Pte Ltd said that the airline is ready to double the service considering the demand is huge, however the airline could not expand due to the regulations.

"It is high time the government consider to be more liberal," said Mahadevan. Today, Scoot is operating between Chennai and Singapore, Amristar and Singapore, while TigerAir is connecting Bangalore, Hyderabad, Tiruchy, Kochi and Lucknow with Singapore.

The airline claims that it is operating at 90 per cent load factor on an average and many times it has to turn away the customers since it could not accommodate them.

"We are hoping that government will liberalise the traffic rights at some point," he added.

The airline claims it grew around 10-15 per cent compared to last year. The airline is comparing the TigerAir's traffic with Scoot's current traffic and claims a market share of around 25 per cent market share in Chennai-Singapore sector.

Scoot currently operates 11 flights a week, including seven from Chennai and four from Amristar. From October, the airline going to start fly in Jaipur-Singapore sector four times a week.

Tiger Airways operates from five cities, including Banglaore, Hyderabad, Tiruchy (twice a day), Kochi and Lucknow.

Today both the carriers comes under one entity, though brands continues to be different for now.

"We would like to double our service, we have the capacity also but we are not able to," Mahadevan said.