Alliance Air to soon ink deal for 10 new ATRs

TIL Desk/Business/New Delhi-Alliance Air, the regional arm of Air India, is likely to sign a pact soon for leasing 10 new turbo-prop planes as the airline plans to fly to smaller towns under the government’s proposed regional connectivity scheme. The state-owned regional airline is at the “final” stages of negotiations with lessors to lease these planes, a source close to the development said.

With two major domestic players not evincing much interest so far in the ambitious regional connectivity scheme (RCS), the government is pinning its hopes on the flag carrier to make it a success. The civil aviation ministry, however, is still working on the final contours of RCS. “The negotiations with the lessors for leasing of 72-seater 10 ATR planes are at final stages and we expect to sign a deal soon,” the source said.

A wholly-owned subsidiary of Air India, Alliance Air operates 39 point-to-point air services daily to 34 cities from its six base stations — Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Bhopal — with the majority of them being tier-II and tier-III cities. It currently has 10 ATRs in its fleet. Two of them are 42-seater ATRs. “We aim to have 14 ATRs in our fleet by March next year.