PTI
On Board A380
May 9, 2007
Finding absolutely nothing wrong with his being interested in Air Deccan, Kingfisher Airlines Chairman Vijay Mallya on Tuesday wondered why the publicly held low-cost carrier's chief G R Gopinath was over-reacting.
"Gopi has completely over-reacted," was Mallya's response when reporters asked about Gopinath's advice to him to "restrict himself to running his own airline rather than talking about Air Deccan".
Asked whether he was still interested, the flamboyant industrialist quipped: "Yes, I am interested. What is wrong with that?"
"It is a public company, I don't know what has prompted him to give this very excitable reaction," Mallya wondered.
Mallya, whose UB Group is the promoter of the full service-true value carrier Kingfisher Airlines, said he would continue to focus on products and service quality and seek rights to fly overseas.
Questioning the bar on carriers that are yet to complete five years in domestic operations and have 20 aircraft from flying abroad, he asked: "When Europe and the US have Open Skies agreement with India and new start up carriers are being allowed from there to India, what is the point in not allowing us to operate".
"It is absolutely wrong not to allow us," said Mallya, who has placed orders for five of Airbus' superjumbo A380s, which he plans to use for flights between India to the East Coast of US once delivery begins in 2010.
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