Surat, December 10, 2014

Surat based Diamond Aeronautics will start its intra-state air service in Gujarat from 13th of December.

The first service will be launched on Surat-Bhavnagar route.

Daily three flights will be operated on this route with minimum fare of Rs. 2000 and maximum Rs. 4000 per seat.

The plane will travel three times on this route each day.

Diamond Aeronautics has two planes at present. Each has capacity of 9 seats.

With this, the distance of Surat-Bhavnagar will come down from 8 hours to 22-30 minutes.

According to Chairman Laljibhai Patel(Ugamedi), the morning flight will leave for Bhavnagar at 7.30 am from Surat and reach Bhavnagar in around half an hour time. It will halt at Bhavnagar airport for 25 minutes or so and come back to Surat.

This flight will be connected to Bhuj, Rajkot and Ahmedabad route in next three-four days.

He said the fare of Rs. 2000 and Rs. 4000 is promotional.

In near future when third plane arrives, the company plans to start service connecting Surat to Indore in Madhya Pradesh.

Diamond barons Laljibhai Patel(Dharmanandan diamon), Savjibhai Dholakia(Shri Hare Krishna Export), Govindbhai Dholakia (Shri Ram Krishna Export) and real estate baron Lavji Daliya(Lavji Badshah) are jointly launching this service with Surat as its base.

First plane of company arrived in last week of October at Surat airport.

According to Laljibhai Patel, this service is not about earning profit. The real motive is to provide better air connectivity to Surat city. While each of two aircraft is 9 seater, one more aircraft planned in future will be a 4 seater.

Company plans to connect the city of Surat to Rajkot, Bhavnagar, Jamnagar, Bhuj, Amreli, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Shirdi.

Water canon ceremony of first plane was performed at Surat airport for first plane(Ventura company) in presence of Dharma Vallabhdasji Swami, local MPs, Mayor, Municipal Commissioner and Police Commissioner during Diwali.

Govindbhai, Savjibhai, Laljibhai and Lavjibhai have taken over Madhya Pradesh based Ventura Airconnect company for Rs. 30 crore and made it subsidiary company of Diamond Aeronautics. Ventura Airconnect went in tendering process before the state government for intrastate air connectivity. The tender has been out with condition of connecting all airports and not to shut down the service on more than 30% routes. The government has approved Mehair company’s tender and asked it to start service in 60 days period.

Surat airport is considered open till 8.40 am as Air India flight is operated before 8.40 am, and ground staff is present. If some air operator wants to operate his flight post 8.40 am which is considered closed period, he needs to pay Rs. 16000 charge minimum for an hour. When SpiceJet flight was operated in the evening, it was considered open time, but now when SpiceJet has stopped its operations, the airport is considered closed even during evenings. In such case, Diamond Aeronautics will need to pay Rs. 32,000 per day for operation on Surat airport.

The project is viable according to insiders of industry. They argue, Surat-Bhavnagar superfast train second AC fare is Rs. 1225, sleeper bus fare is Rs. 400-500, taxi fare would be Rs. 4,000 against which air fare would be Rs. 2,000 which is attractive offer. Once your car drop you at Surat airport, you will reach Bhavnagar before your car actually comes back to your home in Surat, they say.

Laljibhai believes that many people have made good earning in Surat and there are fewer option to spend earned money. This airline will provide an option to people to spend money. The project will be viable if there minimum booking of 200 hours. The company has appointed 12 pilots.