Ranchi, Aug. 7: Air Sahara will launch its flight on the Ranchi-Delhi sector from August 18.

While the airline becomes only the second one to link the state capital with the national one, it will ground its regular flight to the country’s financial capital, Mumbai.

The last flight to Mumbai, which used to come via Patna, will take off on August 17.

The private operator — for its 50-seat aircraft — will offer eight slabs of fare starting from Rs 3,700 with the apex fare being Rs 11,000.

The only airline to fly to Delhi from Ranchi at present, Indian, offers only two slabs — Rs 3,705 and Rs 11,000 — for the 145-seat airbus.

Sources in Air Sahara said the fare structure has been done in such a way that a person has a choice starting from the lowest fare with a gradual ascent to the apex one, unlike the fare of Indian.

The sources added that hardly five or six seats are earmarked for the lower slab on the Indian flight.

Air Sahara has already started reservation for the proposed Delhi-Ranchi flight (S2 6163), which will take off from Delhi at 13.40 hrs and reach here at 15.10 hrs.

After a half-an-hour break at the Birsa Munda Airport, the S2 6164 flight will leave for Delhi at 15.40 hrs and reach there at 17.10 hrs. The Mumbai-Patna-Ranchi-Mumbai flight was quite popular in the state, but in the past few months due to the possible merger of the Air Sahara-Jet Airways, many flights were rescheduled resulting in a reduction of occupancy rate on the sector.

“Now the occupancy rate varies from 50-60 per cent and running a flight between Delhi and Ranchi seems more profitable because the existing Indian flight is unable to fulfil the demand. Everyday, the list of waiting passengers goes up to 30,” the sources said.

Meanwhile, Birsa Munda Airport director A.V. Krishna said they had decided to write to Spice Jet, Kingfisher and Go Air to start services from here.

The airport has the capacity to handle more flights and it will ask the private airlines to link Ranchi with different cities, Krishna said.