The ministry of civil aviation has pulled up Indian Airlines (IA) for poor seat load factor of about 65 per cent despite close down of operations of its major competitors such as East West Airlines, Modiluft and NEPC Airlines.IA carries on an average about 25,000 passenger daily against its total seat capacity of 37,000 seats.

Highly placed sources in the ministry said that civil aviation secretary M K Kaw directed IA managing director P C Sen to immediately take steps for improving seat load factor.

IA has been asked to shore up its sales and marketing efforts.The civil aviation ministry is of the view that with only two private carriers -- Jet Airways and Sahara Airlines -- now operating in domestic skies, IA should be able to improve its seat load factor.

"IA has a dominant position in domestic aviation, especially with so many private carriers having been grounded. So there should not be a problem in attracting more passengers," said a senior level source in the ministry.However, IA officials have a different point of view. They maintain that most of the empty seats are on the non-viable routes on which IA is forced to fly by the government.

"For destinations like Manipur, Port Blair, Leh, we have only one-way traffic. The aircraft is practically empty otherwise", said an IA spokesperson.

"Better sales and marketing efforts will not serve towards filling these seats" he added.

A few foreign airlines like British Airways (BA) disagree. BA has recently begun talks with IA for a special pro-rate agreement which will involve efforts by BA in marketing destinations in India's north-eastern states. The destinations will be marketed to British tourists.

The empty seats also result from the fact that IA aircraft are unsuitable in size. Due to unavailability of small, 50-seater aircraft in its fleet, IA is forced to fly larger Boeings on even its short-haul flights. This results in empty seats as demand is smaller than the capacity on IA aircraft.

IA's plan to induct 50-seater aircraft in its fleet has not made much headway so far. It is unlikely that the airline will get these aircraft this year.

The other area where seats go waste are, surprisingly, on the tourist destinations like Khajuraho and Varanasi, and non-trunk routes like Indore and Bhubaneshwar.

These tourist destinations usually attract foreign travellers, resulting in a traffic flow which is extremely seasonal in nature.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.