Air Transport

India's Kingfisher Airlines has revived international expansion plans and will be launching services to Hong Kong and Singapore next month.

The carrier says on its website that Mumbai-Hong Kong services will be inaugurated on 12 January and Mumbai-Singapore services will be inaugurated on 16 January.

Airbus A330s will be used for the two new services, which will both be operated daily.

Kingfisher said early in November that it had deferred its international expansion plans and would only have Bangalore-London Heathrow services until economic conditions improve. It launched Bangalore-London as its first international service in September.

However Kingfisher later secured additional rights from the Indian Government to serve nine additional international routes and reports have quoted unnamed government officials as saying it must launch them before the end of the winter operating season or lose the right to serve them for two years.

Early this month Kingfisher announced it was launching Mumbai-London Heathrow services on 5 January.

Other routes which it recently won rights to serve include Bangalore-Bangkok, Mumbai-Bangkok, Bangalore-Colombo, Chennai-Colombo, Kolkata-Chittagong and Kolkata-Dhaka. It has yet to say when services on any of these routes may be inaugurated.