Mallya may move Deccan hub to Mumbai

Bangalore: Vijay Mallya-owned Kingfisher Airlines, which renamed Air Deccan to Simplifly Deccan, is now moving the entire operations of the budget carrier from Bangalore to Mumbai.
Sources said this move is part of Mallya’s efforts to integrate the premium carrier with the low-cost Deccan Aviation Ltd. His aim is to overhaul the Air Deccan brand to bring it on par with Kingfisher’s standards.
“Deccan’s marketing operations have been already moved to Mumbai. Gradually, we may see other divisions moving to Mumbai,” the source said.

He added that though Mallya plans to slowly obliterate the Deccan brand, the billionaire would, however, retain the original business model of providing value flying options to its customers. “Mallya is essentially trying to tackle the problems of Simplifly Deccan, which is mostly associated with its image,” he said.
In 2007, when Mallya acquired the loss-ridden budget airline, he delved deeper into the reasons for its unpopularity. He found that Deccan’s image had taken a beating due to the service vendors who were in charge of the security, check-in and ground handling services for the airline.

26/08/08 Praveena Sharma/DNA MONEY/Sify

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