flydubai says ready to fly to any destination available to it

Gulf budget airline 'flydubai', which launched its flights to Delhi and two other cities last week, today said it was ready to operate from any other city which could be made available by the Indian government.
"We are ready to take any challenge... Any destination that is available for us, we can operate," 'flydubai' CEO Ghaith Al Ghaith said here. However, all this would depend on the bilateral air services agreement between India and Dubai.
He said the state-owned airline planned to connect smaller cities in India with the Gulf region as "we believe in empowering people in smaller cities".

But for now, "we will focus on ramping up existing frequencies and increasing number of destinations (in India)", he added.
Besides Delhi, the Dubai-based airline now operates to six Indian cities including Lucknow, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kochi and Thiruvanthapuram. With the recent addition in Indian destinations, it has increased its weekly flights to India to 19 from nine earlier.
Thanking the Indian authorities for providing the opportunity to deliver more options to passengers who are looking to travel to India and the UAE, Ghaith said, "We look forward to working closely with the authorities going forward."

He said the airline's mandate was to focus on Dubai and the Dubai government, which owns the airline, wants it to grow now.

The launch of new flights came in the backdrop of India and Dubai recently signing a fresh bilateral air services agreement which saw an increase in the number of flights that airlines from each country can operate on a weekly basis.
Emirates and 'flydubai' are the two airlines from Dubai which are allowed by the Dubai government to operate flights to and from India, while Jet, IndiGo, SpiceJet, Air India and Air India operate from here.
"The two nations share a lot of historic and cultural ties and the new flights will increase the trade and tourism potential while enabling the Indian expatriate community in the UAE to travel home to visit friends and family more often," Ghaith said.

Maintaining that the new flights were good for economic and cultural development of the two sides, he said the visa policy should be made more lenient to facilitate easy travel and attract more tourists.
Sudhir Sreedharan, senior vice president commercial (GCC, Subcontinent, Africa) for flydubai, said the airline will deploy Business Class configured aircraft on all three new routes in future.
The carrier operates a fleet of 36 aircraft and has a network of 74 destinations, mostly in the Gulf and nearby regions.