Air Costa Cancels 8 Additional Flights for 11 Days

Air Costa, which used to operate 32 daily flights to 9 destinations, was cutting back to 18 flights to 8 destinations from 16 November to 26 November 2015. Its fleet temporarily fell to just two aircraft: one 67 seat Embraer E170 and one 112 seat Embraer E190.

No flights were on sale on the airline's website for one of its patterns, Chennai to Hyderabad to Vishakhapatnam to Bangalore and back via Vishakhapatnam and Hyderabad to Chennai, then on to Jaipur and back (MAA-HYD-VTZ-BLR-VTZ-HYD-MAA-JAI-MAA). As a result Vishakhapatnam was temporarily left without Air Costa service.

Why the fleet shrank

VT-LSR, one of the two E170s, was pulled from service ahead of its planned return to the lessor. VT-LBR, one of the two E190s, operated a special Chennai to Bengaluru flight as LB709, the airline's first 7xx flight number, a ferry flight that was turned into a commercial flight, before leaving for scheduled maintenance in Jordan via Muscat. That left only VT-LNR (E170) and VT-LVR (E190) in the active fleet for the short term.

AirAsia India, by contrast

AirAsia India had one of its A320s, VT-BLR, at Hyderabad for scheduled maintenance since 1 November, yet it did not let operations suffer. Having recently received its sixth aircraft, VT-APJ, it kept flying five patterns with five active aircraft. VT-BLR was due back from maintenance on 16 November so that VT-APJ could move to Delhi and add frequencies on existing routes from the next day. (Edit: VT-BLR flew to Delhi late that morning and would take on Delhi flights from the next day.)

A month earlier

Exactly one month before, The Flying Engineer had reported that Air Costa was not selling E170 sectors between 25 October and 30 November. The airline later changed its plans and started selling and flying 10 E170 flights a day. The one active E170 flew a Vijayawada to Bangalore to Coimbatore to Hyderabad to Vijayawada to Hyderabad to Tirupati to Hyderabad to Coimbatore to Bangalore to Vijayawada pattern (VGA-BLR-CJB-HYD-VGA-HYD-TIR-HYD-CJB-BLR-VGA), totalling 10 hours 15 minutes of block time.

The airline expected two more Embraer E190s to join its fleet soon.