CEO Srinivas Rao said it will operate thrice a week, and it will later be scaled up to five flights a week, from mid-February.
As the new year kicks off, the Indian Aviation industry's new airline Flybig will begin its operations officially on January 3.
The first flight will take off from Indore, the airline's base, at 2.30 in the afternoon to Ahmedabad. It is scheduled to complete the journey in an hour and five minutes.
CEO Srinivas Rao said to Money Control that in the first couple of weeks, it will operate thrice a week, and it will later be scaled up to five flights a week, from mid-February.
According to Moneycontrol, from January 13, Flybig will add the Indore-Raipur route in its network. And from February 1, the airline will begin flying from Ahmedabad to Bhopal. By the end of March this year, the airline will have daily flights connecting all three tier-2 cities.
The airline was founded by Sanjay Mandavia, a pilot-turned-aviator entrepreneur. The airline has tie-ups with over 15,000 agents, many of them in tier-2 cities. Meanwhile, talks with travel agencies is underway.
Moreover, the airline will serve only snacks on board as the flying time is less.
"We don't want to sell food on-board as the flying time is less. That will prevent us from giving a proper service and could lead to frustration among fliers. Thus we opted to offer snacks as part of the ticket," Rao told Money Control.
After the launch, the airline will look to serve tier 3 cities such as Bilaspur and Satna from Bhopal.
It is to be noted that the airline got its permit to serve tier 3 cities such as Bilaspur and Satna from Bhopal. It partly started its operations on December 21, when it operated a Delhi-Shillong chartered flight with the aircraft taken on lease from Spice Jet.
With the lockdown eased in most of the states in the country, domestic air traffic continues to get better. It got an impressive push during the festive season and the end-of-the-year travel.
Moreover, the aircraft can now use 80 percent of their capacity, therfore showing signs of improvement for the domestic aviation industry in the year ahead.
However, with the introduction of the new strain of COVID-19, there are still fears about international travel. Travel to outside countries is still restricted to an air-bubble arrangement with certain countries.
Moreover, India has suspended flights to the UK till January 7 due to the new strain.
It remains to be seen how the airline fares in such uncertain times.
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