Silk Air to focus on India's non-metro cities

Coimbatore: Silk Air, the regional wing of Singapore Airlines, intends to focus on India's secondary cities in a bid to boost tourism and business prospects, according to the airline's vice-president, commercial, David Lim.

Lim said that since the traffic from country's major cities and metros have already reached saturation level, it would be a better idea to tap traffic from fast growing cities.
He was speaking to reporters at the Coimbatore airport after launching the first direct service between Singapore and Coimbatore.

According to Lim, depending on the success of the service it could very likely be increased to five a week from the current thrice a week.

Coimbatore makes Silk Air's third destination in South India, after Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala.

SilkAir is operating an Airbus 319 on the Coimbatore-Singapore route with 120 seats, including 8 business class and 112 economy class seats. The flights would leave Singapore on every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday at 2130 hours and arrive in Coimbatore at 2320 hours(local time). Flights out of Coimbatore would depart on every Monday, Thursday and Saturday at 0025 hours, arriving in Singapore at 0730 hours (local time) the same day.

According to airline officials, the new service will make for a capacity injection of over 700 seats per week.