After Indigo, GoAir and Air Asia, now SpiceJet has launched 12 flights from Terminal 2 at the Mumbai airport. While none of the low-cost carriers wanted to operate from T2 due to high costs, they have been left with no choice because of Jet Airways vacating slots.
Like Air Asia and Vistara, SpiceJet over the weekend added capacity on some routes which were operated by Jet and started using the temporary slots to pursue their expansion. Flights on routes like Mumbai-Madurai, Mumbai-Gorakhpur and Mumbai-Srinagar-Jammu started from May 4, but are temporary and not available for bookings from July-end.
Daily services
All the new flights will be operational daily, except services on the Mumbai-Kochi-Mumbai sector, which will not be operational on Tuesdays, the airline said. Shilpa Bhatia, chief sales and revenue officer, said the airline was taking all measures to deal with the shortage of capacity in the market.
SpiceJet plans to add non-stop flights to Hong Kong, Jeddah, Dubai, Colombo, Dhaka, Riyadh, Bangkok and Kathmandu from Mumbai by May-end, but is yet to announce the timetable.
Since April, the carrier has introduced 77 new flights, including 48 flights connecting Mumbai, 16 connecting Delhi and eight between Mumbai and Delhi.
Air Asia India, which launched its first flight to Mumbai, connecting it to Bengaluru in January with a red-eye flight, now also connects to Kolkata, Kochi, Hyderabad, Indore and New Delhi.
Sunil Bhaskaran, CEO and MD of AirAsia India, termed this decision as one that aligns with the airline’s strategy of significantly expanding its network.
“The introduction of 10 additional routes will further help flyers from India’s commercial capital to fly to various destinations within the country. It will also add new flyers to our network,” Mr. Bhaskaran said.
Flight numbers
While Indigo’s 26 domestic flights numbered between 6E 5300 and 6E 5399, operate from T2, SpiceJet flights numbered between SG 6000 and 6999 will be operated from Terminal 2. Air Asia and Vistara have not had to split flights as they only operate from T2.
