Air Sahara will restructure its operations to cut costs while offering full services instead of turning into a low-cost carrier, the airlines' newly appointed president Rono J Dutta, said on Monday.

"The concept of a low-cost, no-frills airline is being merged into having high-quality, low-cost carriers. That is where Air Sahara wants to be.

"We want to be a global high-quality airline with a low-cost structure," Dutta said.

According to Dutta, the concept of a low-cost, no-frills airline had failed internationally. "Many international carriers had tried this model and failed in it," he said.

As per international norms, a full-service airline has an average passenger cost of 11.5 cents, while a low-cost carrier has a cost structure of 7.5 cents. "We want to bring down the cost to 7.5 cents, while maintaining the quality of service," Dutta said.

Dutta said that about 40 per cent of the cost of an airline in India was determined by the government, while the remaining depended on the internal processes of the airline.

"We can reduce the internal component of the cost by restructuring and rationalising a lot of operational aspects," he said.

Air Sahara is also looking at additional revenue opportunities to tap. "Global airlines earn revenues from operations like cargo, engineering services and other airport services. We will have to look at these areas too," Dutta pointed out.

The airline plans to expand its service network into more international destinations including the SAARC and ASEAN countries as also to West Asia, UK and the US. "We are interested to fly to more international destinations. We will start operations once the government permissions come," he said. Air Sahara currently operates to Colombo and plans to start a service to Kathmandu in September.

Air Sahara also wants to participate in the modernisation and privatisation of Delhi and Mumbai airports. "We will play a role and participate in the airport modernisation and restructuring process.

"The airports are congested and there is a lot of scope for improvement. We are considering all alternatives," Dutta, the former president of world's largest carrier United Airlines.

Dutta, who took over as Air Sahara president from U K Bose last week, said that at present it was not ready to offload stake to bring in equity funding while in the long run it may look at it depending on the requirements.