Air Costa to start Chennai-Jaipur service, cut winter flights

Mumbai: Regional carrier Air Costa on Tuesday said it will launch a direct daily flight between Chennai and Jaipur from Sunday even as it has reduced capacity by 10 per cent during the winter schedule owing to several reasons.

The Vijayawada-based airline also said it will offer a special Diwali discount of Rs 500 in fares across its flights booked between October 21 and October 25 for travel up to March 28 next year. Air Costa will launch a daily non-stop flight between Chennai and Jaipur effective October 26 with a starting fare of Rs 4,999, the airline said in a release here.

"These new flights are being started after we received encouraging feedback from our passengers, especially from Chennai and Jaipur. It is our constant endeavour to provide flexibility and choice for our customers," Air Costa Managing Director L V S Rajasekhar said.

Also, the Diwali discount offer will allow passengers to enjoy the festival by planning their journey and holidays in advance with Air Costa, he said.

The private carrier said it will operate 34 flights per day, including the proposed Chennai-Jaipur, during the winter schedule as against 38 services it operated during summers, thereby reducing the total capacity by 10 per cent.

Air Costa has decided to pull out its Hyderabad-Jaipur, Bangalore-Chennai and Hyderabad-Chennai flights from the network during the winters, it said.

"Since flights during the winter months are always prone to disruption due to fog, the total number of flights have been reduced so that we have ample slag time in the aircraft rotation and are able to reduce the consequential delays. We reduced our flights also due to the runway constraints at Jaipur airport."

Air Costa currently operates 38 daily flights connecting Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Vijayawada with a fleet of four Embraer aircraft.

Run by Vijayawada-headquartered diversified Group LEPL, the airline last week announced plans to fly pan-India from the first quarter of the next fiscal.