New Delhi, Jan 12 (PTI) Seeking to tap the "huge growth opportunities", Air India will increase the number of premium economy and business class seats in its aircraft, realign flight timings to carry more connecting traffic and rationalise network to deploy optimum capacity.

Tata Group, which has been steering the loss-making Air India since January 2022, has consolidated its airline business and Air India Group's revenues have jumped around 10 times to nearly USD 10 billion now compared to less than USD 1 billion in FY20, according to a senior company official.

Air India Group operates 1,168 daily flights, including 313 services to international destinations. Of those overseas flights, 244 are short haul and 69 are long haul.

Generally, short-haul flights have a duration of up to 5 hours, and those having a duration of 5-8 hours are long haul flights.

Air India's Chief Commercial Officer Nipun Aggarwal said whether it is premium economy or business, load factors have gone up and "we are seeing a lot of traction".

"We are very focused on premium segment (premium economy and business class) and there are huge opportunities. The revenue growth in front cabin has been almost 2.3X and in back cabin is 1.3X. We have been able to achieve this through better timings, better experience at airports, in-flight and better quality of meals," he said at a media briefing this week.

Noting that front cabin gives more revenues, especially in the case of full service carriers, and the back cabin basically helps to fill the plane, he said Air India will be increasing the size of the premium cabin in wide-body aircraft.

"In the retrofit we are doing, we will add more premium seats... we are almost doubling the premium seats in the wide bodies... business and premium economy," Aggarwal said.

There are also plans to have first class seats in wide-body A350-1000 planes going forward. Currently, many of the airline's Boeing 777 aircraft have first class seats.

As part of the ambitious transformation plan, Air India has started retrofitting narrow body planes and that of wide body aircraft will commence later this year.

Going forward, all narrow body planes of Air India will have three classes -- economy, premium and business.

There will be 53,000 premium seats with new/upgraded product on metro-to-metro routes by mid-2025.

Asserting that now there is the right business model and the right product for the market as a whole, Aggarwal said network rationalisation and realignment of flight timings are continuing.

At the time of Air India takeover, Aggarwal said there were 29 overlapping domestic routes and that has been reduced to 20 (from 20 per cent to 12 per cent). There were 23 overlapping international routes and that has come down to 6 (from 26 per cent to 5 per cent).

"We are realigning the network and clearly segregating the market where Air India and Air India Express will operate. This is a continuous exercise... it is based on market dynamics... we will continue to deploy capacities from both the airlines in the best possible way," he said.

Realignment is being done to get connecting traffic and provide more itineraries to the passengers.

"The average connecting time from domestic to international flights has been reduced to 3.30 hours from 6.30 hours. The connecting time will further improve... Air India wants to focus on hubs and bring traffic from South East Asia, Far East, and SAARC, and then take them to Europe, US, Canada," he said.

Aggarwal also said the focus is on those markets from where we can get more international to international (I to I) connectivity. I to I traffic is currently around 10 per cent and Air India hopes to increase it to 15-20 per cent in the next three years.

"We have tried to align the timings of flights that go to Europe and Australia. Now we will be able to align flights that are coming from Paris, Frankfurt, and London with those that are going to Melbourne and Sydney and vice-versa.

"Similar realignment has been done between South East Asia and Europe, SAARC and Europe, SouthEast Asia and North America, SAARC and North America," he said.

According to him, the I to I traffic flying over India is 130 million, which is around six times the country's own long-haul traffic.

Air India has 135 narrow body planes and 67 wide body aircraft. It will focus on three hubs -- Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru -- and all other markets will be served by Air India Express.

Emphasising that the head room for growth is immense and the outlook is very bright, Aggarwal said, "We (Air India) have acquired size and scale, and it is now a meaningful and material business for the (Tata) group".

Currently, there are around 300 planes with the Air India Group, which comprises Air India, Air India Express, Vistara, and AIX Connect.

Last year, Vistara was merged with Air India and AIX Connect was integrated with Air India Express. PTI RAM TRB TRB