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Nepal's Cosmic Air looks to Indian market for growth:Sunday - 26th December 2004 |
| [World News]: New Delhi, Dec 26 : Less than a month after launching flights to the Indian capital, Nepal's Cosmic Air is firming plans to provide connectivity to other cities and in particular woo road travellers from Uttar Pradesh. Cosmic Air started operations to India with a lucrative buy-one-get-one free ticket offer that is seeing almost full capacity on both its daily flights between Kathmandu and New Delhi since Dec 1. The airline is now awaiting permission of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to operate daily flights to Lucknow to lure hundreds of people who daily cross over the long border the Himalayan kingdom shares with India. "There is no air corridor at present between Lucknow and Kathmandu. We have already applied to DGCA for routing a flight. A DGCA team will be holding talks with us in Kathmandu on Jan 1 to finalise the proposal," said R. P. Pradhan, executive chairman of SOI Group, the parent company of Cosmic Air. A leading business house of Nepal, the $500 million annual turnover SOI Group is a conglomerate of 16 companies with interests in tourism, aviation, banking, general trading, manufacturing, telecommunications and hydropower among others. "Cosmic Air is aiming to attract people travelling by road to fly to Nepal. Currently only a small percentage travel by air, while most prefer to go across the border by road for trade and holiday," Pradhan told IANS here. In 2003, only 86,000 people from India travelled to Nepal by air, while many more went across the border by road. Nepal, however, maintains no record of the daily crossings by land. Uttar Pradesh being a big potential market, Pradhan is keen to start operations to Lucknow even as he is firming plans to provide connectivity to Bodh Gaya and Varanasi as part of plans to cater to both Buddhist and Hindu pilgrims. "As we are already operating flights to Lumbini, the birth place of Gautam Buddha, we now want to connect to Bodh Gaya, Varanasi and Lucknow. These operations should start in three to four months once we get clearances," said Pradhan. In operation since 1997, Cosmic Air has added to its fleet two Fokker 100 jets with 105 seating capacity. The airline is expecting to take delivery of two more Fokker aircraft by January-end. Targeting to double its revenues through Indian operations, Cosmic Air is also rolling out plans to start flights to Mumbai in three months followed by Bangalore in around five months. Simultaneously, it would start flights to Bhutan and Bangkok. In November, the airline had commenced operations to Dhaka. It plans to offer connectivity to Rangoon and Colombo by 2005-end. "Besides providing direct connectivity, we are trying for some commercial arrangements with private Indian airlines to facilitate travel to other destinations within India and from Delhi to Kathmandu and other places in Nepal," said Pradhan. "We already have a tie-up with Qatar Airways for international routes and are looking to provide similar facilities in tie-ups with other airlines for both domestic and international passengers," he said. |
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