Mumbai: Low-fare airline SpiceJet Ltd on Monday said it will add 14 domestic flights from 1 July, including new routes and new flights in existing routes.
The new direct flights are in sectors like Pune-Patna, Chennai-Rajahmundry, Hyderabad-Calicut and Bengaluru-Tuticorin, the airline said. It will also start additional direct flights on the Delhi-Patna, Bengaluru-Rajahmundry and Mumbai-Bengaluru sectors.
The airline will use its Boeing 737 and Bombardier Q-400 planes for these flights.
The new flights were not launched under the government-backed regional connectivity scheme (RCS), a SpiceJet spokesperson said.
With traffic in metropolitan cities saturated, airlines are now looking at busy smaller towns and cities for growth.
SpiceJet’s chairman director and managing director Ajay Singh told Mint in April that it will continue to expand into smaller towns to generate revenue as it continues to see high load factors and yield from these routes.
“We will add new destinations like Kanpur, Darbhanga, Hubli and Pakyong (Sikkim) as soon as airports at these places are ready and connect them to bigger cities such as Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata,” Singh said.
“As we expand and grow, the cost should come down,” Singh said.
Jet Airways had on 14 June launched flights on the routes it won under regional connectivity scheme.
Of the seven sectors that Jet Airways has been awarded under RCS, the airline is launching five this week, the airline said in a statement.
These routes include Lucknow-Allahabad, Patna-Allahabad, Nagpur-Allahabad, Indore-Allahabad, and Delhi–Nashik, Jet Airways added.