After serious considerations on floating a regional airline, the TVS group has now abandoned the idea.

Venu Srinivasan, Managing Director of TVS Suzuki, however believes that the group should have moved into this field long back.

He had tried to persuade TVS & Sons, a group company to consider taking up the project. But TVS & Sons declined on the grounds that it already had its hands full with various other projects.

This, incidentally was the reason why TVS Suzuki itself did not pursue the project further.

In an informal conversation with reporters soon after addressing the press for the first time after taking over as the new Chairman of CII-SR, Venu Srinivasan said there was need for a regional airline, which would link up Chennai and Bangalore to the second line of cities like Trichy, Salem, Coimbatore, Hosur, Belgaum, Mysore and Mangalore. The absence of good regional air transport was a bottleneck in the development of tourism in South India.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.