Zoom Air, India’s newest private airline and the 10th schedule carrier for domestic skies, will commence its maiden operations today with its Delhi-Kolkata-Durgapur-Delhi daily service, after receiving its schedule operating permit from India’s Director General of Civil Aviation earlier this month.
The full-service carrier is utilising the 50-seater Bombardier CRJ-200LR aircraft on this sector, which is on a dry lease, and will be adding four more similar aircraft to its fleet in the coming months.
The new airline will focus on serving the underserved airports in the country, according to Koustav Dhar, CEO and director of Zoom Air. “We will fill the gap of connecting sectors which are less catered by other scheduled airlines. (For example), Durgapur is an industrial hub (in West Bengal) with a huge potential for air connectivity,” he said.
Moving forward, Zoom Air has plans to begin daily flights on the Delhi-Surat-Bhavnagar-Delhi sector in early April. It is also looking to connect Delhi and Kolkata to destinations such as Tirupati, Vijayawada, Mumbai, Shillong, Aizawl, Pasighat and Ziro.
Zoom Air intends to hit 32 to 35 scheduled departures a day in the next four to five months, Dhar shared.
As well, the airline hopes to begin international operations in about a year’s time to neighbouring countries such as Bangladesh, Nepal and Myanmar.
Dhar elaborated: “There is huge traffic from India’s north-east into Myanmar. As for Bangladesh, Indian carriers currently only fly to Dhaka. We are looking at unserved destinations like Chittagong there.”
