Air India’s Ticket Sales Leap by 32 Percent in February

Air India, popular choice among those looking for flights to India, posted improved figures in year-on-year performance in February. The airline’s average passenger revenue grew by 32%, a senior airline official said.

India’s flag carrier, Air India seems to be on right track as the carrier registered another progress in year-on-year performance in the month of February.

As per a senior airline official, Air India’s average passenger revenue grew by 32% in the month.

While revenue from international services saw a jump of 20%, the revenue from the domestic circuit swelled up nearly 58% during the period. The collective revenue rose up to 32%.

Going seems to be good for the carrier that is known among foreigners as one of primary options for taking flights to India.

“The airline’s on-time performance has improved by up to 80% across the network, in the first week of March, reaching as high as 88% on March 8,” the Air India official was quoted in several Indian newspapers.

Capacity on its international services remained more or less stagnant, on the domestic service, it went up by 20% and on the overall network by 4%, he added.

The official also stated that there has been a significant increase in the number of passengers carried by the airline. The figures went up 13.4% on the overall network, he said.

Rise in fuel costs, however, continues to eat up the airline’s considerable swell in revenues, the official said.

“However, aviation turbine fuel prices alone registered an increase of 20% in February. For the entire year, Air India expects the impact of the increase in aviation turbine fuel to be in the region of Rs 2,000 crore. On a cumulative basis, from April 2011 to February 2012, its fuel cost has gone up by 40%. If it was not for the fuel price we would have done far better,” the AI official said.

Air India hopes to counter the surge in fuel costs, at least to some degree, by deploying the world’s most fuel efficient aircraft, Boeing 787 Dreamliner, on its long haul routes in coming few months. Travellers, netting tickets on long-haul flights will be able to experience the charm of Boeing 787.

Boeing 787 Dreamliners are 20 percent more fuel-efficient and might just make it easy for Air India to roll out tickets on cheap flights for holiday makers. Cheap flights to India will surely be on customer’s mind when the airline inducts the Dreamliner in its fleet of aircraft in May.

As per reports, Air India is also mulling over the idea of direct import of fuel to save on fuel cost.