Air Costa, the regional airliner from Andhra Pradesh, which has halted its flight operations, will be up and running from Friday. The airliner had to suspend operations on Thursday after it encountered financial issues with its leasing companies.
Speaking to The Hindu on Thursday, Kavi Chaurasia, vice president, marketing and communications, Air Costa said over phone, “We’ve just halted for a day owing to the financial issues with our leasing firms. We are negotiating with them. There was nothing specific and we want to get rid of the issue as soon as possible so that we can start operations tomorrow. I’m 100 per cent sure that we’ll be resuming operations from Friday.”
These issues are bound to happen for a start-up airline, according to Mr.Chaurasia. He, however, did not want to give further information on the issues and leasing companies.
Negating any sort of similarity with Air Pegasus which grounded its operations few days ago, the vice president said, “There is no comparison with Pegasus. They had different issues altogether. They even applied for de-listing. Whereas, we want to expand for pan-India presence.” By the end of this calendar year, the airliner intends to add two more aircraft to its current three Embraer 190 aircraft according to Mr. Chaurasia.
At present, Air Costa is running 24 daily flights to Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Visakhapatnam, Coimbatore, Tirupati and Vijayawada.
Refund, re-booking for passengers:
Meanwhile, the airliner is facilitating 100 per cent refund of the fare and re-booking facility for the passengers according to the Air Costa’s media relations representative Pramod Mitta. On a typical day, the airliner transports about 3,000 passengers across nine destinations.