Flybig, India’s newest airline, to begin operations from January 3

The first week of 2021 will see the Indian aviation industry get its newest airline Flybig, which will begin operations on January 3. The inaugural flight will take off from Indore, the airline’s base, at 2.30 in the afternoon to Ahmedabad. The total flying time will be an hour and five minutes.

In the initial couple of weeks, the airline founded by Sanjay Mandavia – a pilot-turned-aviation entrepreneur – will operate thrice a week. “We will later scale up to have five flights a week, from mid-February,” CEO Srinivas Rao told Moneycontrol.

From January 13, Flybig will add the Indore-Raipur route in its network. And from February 1, the airline will begin flying from Ahmedabad to Bhopal. By the end of March this year, the airline will have daily flights connecting all the three tier-2 cities.

Flybig has an ATR aircraft, and is in the process of getting a second one.

“We opened up bookings two days ago. The interest is good and we have seen bookings of 25 percent,” Rao, added. The airline has tied up with over 15,000 agents, many of them in the tier-2 cities. Talks are also on with online travel agencies.

The airline, which organised a ‘special flight’ for a differently abled on December 31 in Jabalpur, will add the city in its network in the second stage.

The launch of the new airline comes even as the domestic air traffic continues to improve, having got a push during the festive season and year-end travel. While the government had hiked the cap, enabling airlines to now use 80 percent of their capacity, the hope is now that this will be eased further.

Some concerns remain. Despite the governments beginning to administer vaccines, a new strain of COVID-19 has again brought back fears, especially for international travel. As a precautionary measure, India has suspended flights to the UK, where the new strain originated, till January