Air India Express, the no-frills international arm of the ailing national carrier Air India, is hopeful to achieve break-even by the next fiscal, a top company official has said.

“We are already in cash-profit and expect to achieve break-even by the turn of the 2013 fiscal. We are hopeful of this, as we expect to reap the full benefit of the soon-to-be commissioned hangar at Thiruvananthapuram by then,” one of the senior-most officials of Air India Express (AIE), who requested anonymity, told from Kochi. As per a PTI report, the AIE moved its headquarters to Kochi in December 2010 from Mumbai for better operational efficiency and coordination and the airline got a new headquarter building in February this year. The official also pointed out that the airline could already have been in profit, had it not been for the 25 per cent revenue sharing agreement with the parent Air India. .

“If we discount this 25 per cent payout to AI, we are already profitable,” he said. The airline, which began operations on April 29, 2005 a revenue of Rs 1,741 crore in FY09, its best-ever numbers, when it was flying 25 aircrafts as it returned three planes on lease. But since then, the number of planes came down to 22 in 2010 and after the Mangalore crash, further down to 21. In FY11, the airline had revenue of Rs 1,726 crore, the official said.

The airline paid salaries to the 975 staffers on its rolls. Since employees of AI and erstwhile Indian Airlines are not paid, the 200-odd senior people from these airlines sent on deputation to AI Express did not get salaries. This list includes the low-cost carrier's chief executive officer and 100 of its top pilots.

Sources said the low-cost carrier's (LCC) management decided to pay salaries - unlike the cash-strapped AI - since a large percentage of its staffers earn less than Rs 12,000 a month. The LCC's cabin crew also gets about Rs 30,000 a month - mush lower than their AI counterparts.