A carrier in India scales down fleet expansion

India’s GoAir has decided to scale down its expansion plan by reducing the number of planes it is going to operate in the next four years.

The decision is being attributed to reasons such as existing policies, high ATF prices leading to increased cost of operations, and slow development of aviation infrastructure.

The airline now plans to buy 18 new aircraft by March 2009 against 20 projected earlier and 34 new aircraft by March 2011 against 50 projected earlier.

Jeh Wadia, MD, GoAir, said, “We need to be patient. We have scaled down our aircraft acquisition plans due to various reasons such as taxation, slow infrastructure development, etc, but our breakeven projections remain intact. Breakeven should be achieved in 2008 and we could possibly look at listing the company the year after,” Wadia said announcing the acquisition of GoAir’s first Airbus aircraft on Thursday.

GoAir has placed an order for 20 new aircraft with Airbus, translating to a $1.2 billion payout over 18 months.

The airline may also go in for either an IPO or have a financial investor on board by offloading up to 26 percent stake by 2009, Wadia reportedly said.