Indian flyers will soon have option to take late night domestic flights at dirt cheap fares

NEW DELHI: Indian flyers will soon have the option of taking late night domestic flights for dirt cheap fares. The Tata Sons-AirAsia JV low cost carrier plans to launch these "red eyes" — called so in the west because of the army of sleepy and watery eyes of passengers where they are very popular due to low prices — after the winter fog subsides early next year.

"This is among the pushing-the-envelope plans we have for our airline. It will increase aircraft utilization for airlines. And for passengers, there will be other attraction apart from low fares as people who do not want to spend on staying the night in a hotel can return to their home cities on these flights instead of waiting for the morning flights," Mittu Chandilya, CEO of AirAsia India Pvt Ltd (AAIPL), told TOI.

Depending on the success of these proposes flights, other airlines are also likely to follow suit as the move would allow them to also increase aircraft utilization and earn more revenue. Red eyes usually take off between 11pm and 4am and are a big hit abroad because of their really low fares. Most of the international flights out of India are technically red eye as they take off in the dead of the night.

In fact, the concept of low cost flying in India was started by Air India (international) about 25 years back when it flew the domestic leg of its foreign flights late at night for very low fares. For instance, a London-Delhi-Mumbai flight would offer very low fares for the domestic sector to fill up seats as this flight would take off at 2.30am or so.

AAIPL's plan for red eyes comes at a time when it has decided to expand its footprint in India and grow aggressively. AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes on Thursday announced that the airline will begin flights to Delhi and Mumbai "within this year". The youngest schedule carrier (Tata-Singapore Airlines is yet to start flying) currently has two aircraft in its fleet and will have six by the end of this year, a number that will go up to 20 by 2015-end.

The airline, which currently flies to six cities, will raise the number of points to 10 by early next year. So the fleet, reach and number of flights would have become sizeable by the time it launches the red eye flights.