Trujet to treble its aircraft fleet

Hyderabad: Trujet, the four-year-old regional airline operated by city-based Turbo Megha Airways Private Limited, on Friday announced mega expansion plans that would see its aircraft fleet increasing by three-fold over next two years. The airline will also launch its operations on six new routes while increasing flights on four of its existing routes this year.

Taking off with two ATR-72 aircraft in July 2015, the regional airline currently owned by city-based infrastructure major Megha Engineering & Infrastructure Limited (MEIL) has five aircraft, connecting 20 cities, mostly Tier 2 and Tier 3 destinations.

It is the first regional airline to have started operations on all the routes under UDAN 1 and 2 schemes. UDAN (Ude Desh ka Aam Naagrik) is the regional connectivity scheme (RCS) launched by the Central government in April 2017 to encourage air connectivity to smaller destinations by providing viability gap fund (VGF) on tickets.

"Over the past four years, Trujet has been able to create its own niche in the regional connectivity space and we are the only standing airline among the regional airlines which started operations around the same time as us.

To strengthen our presence and expand operations, we will double our fleet to 10 ATR aircraft in 2019 and add 5-8 aircraft next year," KV Pradeep, Director, MEIL, told the media here. Trujet celebrated its fourth anniversary on Friday. The airline will add six new destinations and increase in frequency in four of its existing 20 destinations this year.

Besides connecting Belgavi to Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Tirupati and Jalgaon to Ahmedabad and Mumbai, it will also foray into North Eastern region where the airline will develop its third hub. It will restart operations on Hyderabad-Visakhapatnam sector and launch services on Nagpur-Hyderabad route.

"For air connectivity perspective, North East continues to remain an underpenetrated market. We won bids for North East routes under UDAN last year. Later this year, we will connect Guwahati to Teju, Rupsi, Cooch Bihar and other cities," said K G Viswanath, Chief Financial Officer, Trujet.

He further maintained that Trujet's growth strategy would continue to focus on regional markets. "We would like to be known as the carrier of the choice for first time fliers originating from Tier 3 and 4 cities," he said.

At present, it flies 70,000 passengers a month and 8.4 lakh a year. "Once we double out fleet this year, our annual passenger traffic will hit 16 lakh or so," Pradeep said. So far, nearly 20 lakh people used Trujet in last four years.

On hiring plans, he said: "the company has already recruited 100 employees from Jet Airways. We are going to add 200 to 300 more people over next two months to strengthen our operations". The company now has 700 employees.

MEIL currently owns 90 per cent of Trujet while the remaining 10 per cent stake is with Telugu film actor Ram Charan and others. "We have no plans to increase our stake in the company. However, we may go for IPO after the company reaches a reasonable size. We may look at IPO after three years," Pradeep said.

The company is looking at a topline growth of 50 per cent in FY20. It was Rs 165 crore last fiscal. The company incurred a loss of Rs 84 crore during 2018-19 but expects losses to be a fraction of that in the current fiscal.