Budget carrier GoAir has added 50th aircraft to its fleet, doubling its fleet in a span of less than two years, it said in a statement on Thursday. The Wadia group airline has become the fastest growing carrier in the country, it said. However, it is still far behind rival SpiceJet and other airlines such as IndiGo, Air India, with less than half the fleet size. Going ahead, GoAir looks to add at least one aircraft every month, on average, Jeh Wadia, Managing Director, GoAir, announced. Speaking about the company’s plans of expanding further, he also said that the airline will add four more international destinations to its network.
GoAir, which started its operations in 2005, had ordered 144 Airbus A320 aircraft in 2016, betting big on India’s economic growth as well as the role that GoAir could play within the aviation sector. “That year we doubled our aircraft order with a clear vision of accelerating growth and at the same time staying profitable,” Jeh Wadia said.
Rival airline SpiceJet had also recently added the 100th aircraft in May 2019 and with this, it had become the fourth airline to do so. Announcing the same, Ajay Singh, CMD SpiceJet had said that nobody could have imagined that from the brink of closure in December 2014, SpiceJet would one day have a 100-aircraft fleet in 2019. India has eight domestic carriers viz Air India, IndiGo, SpiceJet, GoAir, Air India Express, Vistara, AirAsia and Alliance and have over 500 aircraft in total.
GoAir now operates 270 daily direct flights which connect 24 domestic and 4 international destinations. With Airbus A320s aircraft, the airline serves various Indian cities including Ahmedabad, Bagdogra, Bengaluru, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Goa, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kochi, Kolkata, Kannur, Leh, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Ranchi and Srinagar, among others. Among GoAir’s international destinations are Phuket, Malé, Muscat and Abu Dhabi.
