Aeroflot plans to touch city

New Delhi, April 17: Russian airline Aeroflot plans to start flights to Calcutta, Bangalore, Amritsar and Ahmedabad.

The company, which has flights to Delhi and Mumbai from Moscow, wants to wing its way to other Indian cities as well. It also wants to increase the number of weekly flights to the two gateway airports if the Indian government permits. It plans to increase its flights to Delhi to 12 a week from seven and those to Mumbai to seven a week from four.

Igor V. Iveliev, general manager of Aeroflot, said the company was interested in Calcutta because of its immense growth potential and the traffic in the eastern market.

With 70 per cent of its seats filled up on an average day, Aeroflot feels it could turn India into one of its ‘milk cow’ routes. Iveliev said the company would like to increase the total number of flights from India to 30 after expanding its operations.

Sources said Aeroflot was weighing the option of operating flights between Amritsar and Moscow to cater to the rising demand of people from Punjab travelling to Europe, Canada and the US. Aeroflot also plans to expand its fleet and improve its services. It is planning to increase its fleet strength of 90 to 400. To begin with, it will include 10 more Airbus 330 in its fleet.

The nearly 50-year-old airline flies passengers to 47 countries, including 34 destinations in Russia and 59 in other parts of the world.

Aeroflot ranks India among the top 10 in the global aviation market. The Indo-Russia airline market has been growing at an average of 20-25 per cent over the past four years.