How to start your own low cost airline - with ECA support
How about starting your own airline? All you need is Rs 10 crore (€1,833,840, US$2,168,257) in paid-up capital to start a regional airline with an aircraft of less than 80 seats. A good example is Air Deccan, which started as a regional airline with a single turboprop ATR aircraft before spreading its wings across the country. Today, an LCC with a pan-India presence would cost you $40-45 million (Rs 180-202 crore). If you can increase it to $65-70 million (Rs 270-315 crore), you could also build in some cushion that can help you to tide over a crisis like an oil price spiral. Jet Blue, Richard Branson’s LCC in Australia, had burnt $45 million before it could fly a single aircraft. Airlines is a high cash-burn business. You spend Rs 2.5 lakh an hour to fly an Airbus A320. To fly it for 10 hours a day, you need Rs 8 crore. If you have six aircraft — airlines need to bring in six aircraft within year of starting operations — you will burn