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The launch of the Chennai route will be served with three flights a week which will see flydubai operate a total of 29 weekly flights between Dubai and India.
In a statement, Ghaith Al Ghaith, Chief Executive Officer at flydubai, said, "Addition of Chennai to our network will provide the opportunity to travellers to visit Dubai more often and explore the flydubai network which we are already seeing from our other points in India."
It will also provide the opportunity to connect, with the interline agreements we have in place, onwards through Dubai's aviation hub. India has strong economic and cultural ties with the region and we are committed to enhancing connectivity between India and Dubai, he said.
The carrier added four more routes in India in 2014 offering passengers from Dubai affordable travel options to Delhi, Kochi, Mumbai and Thiruvananthapuram. With 29 weekly flights to India, India contributes is approximately 4.4% of total network contribution for full year 2014, said Sudhir Sreedharan, Senior Vice President, Commercial (GCC, Subcontinent, Africa) at flydubai.
He added, flydubai sees India as a key market on its network. With the launch of four new points in India in 2014, flydubai saw a 70% growth in passenger numbers. He hopes the occupancy would be around 90-95% in the Chennai route and all India would be over 90%.
"The number of seats from Dubai is not enough to serve the Indian cities. We need more seats between Indian cities and Dubai. However, the allocation is full. We need to wait for the increase through bilateral agreements between the two governments," he said.
"We feel the capacity available is not justified for this region. There is a huge demand in the leisure and business sectors and also visiting family and friends," said Sreedharan.
The Airline also said that it would look at getting revenue from in-flight advertisements. "Currently, we do not have any in-flight advertisements. We are looking at it," Sreedharan told reporters here.
