Due to a spurt in air fares on the Gulf routes during Ramazan and Onam festivals the Kerala government plans to revive a seven year plan to launch its own airline Air Kerala.
Currently, Air India Express flies 145 daily flights down from about 200 flights about six months ago. The flights have been curtailed owing to various reasons such as DGCA\'s new flight duty rules, crew shortage and recent diversion of two of its planes for Haj charters.
It operates to ten destinations in the Gulf from Kerala and its busiest routes are to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Sharjah. However AI Express has been increasingly facing competition from other Gulf low-cost airlines such Air Arabia and Bahrain Air as well Indian carriers such as Jet Airways.
Last week Kerala chief minister Oommen Chandy announced that government will launch Air Kerala to link the state with Gulf and added that the government will seek a waiver from civil aviation ministry as the rules require airlines to have minimum five years service and a fleet of 20 planes to launch international flights.
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