Paramount to fly to 35 more cities

Ahead of its plans to fly to international locales, Paramount Airways, the Chennai-based premium service carrier, is launching services to various other destinations in the country.

The fully business-class airline is to commence services to 35 more cities, increasing its domestic routes to 50 by the end of 2010. It is to launch services to the northern region, including Delhi, and to the western and eastern parts, too.

"We are looking at having a strong domestic network, prior to starting our international operations. We are looking at connecting to every major airport in the country in a phased manner," Paramount's managing director, M Thiagarajan, told Business Standard in Mumbai.

Delhi is one of the new planned destinations, so are Imphal, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Bhopal, Nagpur, Porbander and other places in Gujarat. This is in addition to the earlier announced plans of launching services to Kolkata, Guwahati and Agartala, connecting these to the south Indian cities of Chennai, Coimbatore and Kochi.

Paramount will also add another 10 aircraft to its existing fleet of six planes, and is currently doing a technical evaluation of aircraft. It is looking at acquiring either from Airbus Industrie or Boeing, under a Rs 4,000 crore (Rs 40 billion) deal, on an operational lease.