Fly to Singapore for less than Rs 6,000

Fly to Singapore for less than Rs 6,000
Deccan Herald

Low-cost domestic flights are nothing new to Bangalore. But in a month’s time Bangaloreans can fly out --to begin with to Singapore--without burning a hole in their pockets.

Jetstar Asia, a Singapore-based low cost carrier will fly between the City State and the IT capital of India five times a week from October-end or early November. “With this, the budget airline will be making it the first value-for-money carrier from Singapore to establish links with the world’s leading IT centre”, an airline official said. The fares have not been fixed, but sources said the airline is likely to offer the cheapest fares on this sector.

Bangalore will be the second airport to be operated by Jetstar, the first being Kolkata where it started its services on August 18, making it the first budget airline to fly into India. The airline will also start an additional service to Kolkata shortly. The Kolkata-Singapore fare starts from S$ 218 which is less than Rs 5,700 one way.

The low fare may trigger a price war among the airlines flying between the two airports, sources said. At present, in full service airlines, the one-way ticket between the two cities costs anywhere between Rs 23,000 and Rs 27,000 .

Growing traffic

Official sources said the main reason for starting new flights from Bangalore to Singapore is the growing traffic between Singapore and India, which grew by 22 per cent in the first half of 2004. Tourist arrivals from Singapore occupied 11th place in the share of top markets for India in 2004 with the total number at 33.37 lakh. Over 4.71 lakh Indians visited Singapore in 2004, making it the sixth largest market.

Jetstar CEO Ken Ryan said: “I’m delighted that we’ll soon be able to offer our passengers the Bangalore option.

Bangalore’s business connection with Singapore is strong and travel demand in recent years has grown at impressive rates. We expect that with a new price and service position we’ll be able to attract the market and grow new ones.”

“We’ll appeal to the travellers who would fly in to Singapore from Bangalore for long weekends to use the Jetstar Asia service for onward holiday destinations such as Phuket or Hong Kong,” Mr Ryan said. While Jetstar Asia keeps prices low, the low-frills airline provides onboard services. This includes the digEplayer service, which combines music, movies and sitcoms in each seat on routes to Bangalore, Kolkata, Hong Kong, Manila and Taipei at a nominal cost of S$12 per flight. Hot food, snacks and beverages along with duty free items can be purchased on board.

Jetstart, launched in December 2004, has five aircraft and flies mostly to South East Asian countries.

It has an understanding with another Singapore-based budget airline Valueair.