After having slashed fares when his competitors increased them, low-cost carrier Air Deccan's chief G R Gopinath on Monday said the airline would increase the number of flights instead of fares to meet the passenger demand.

   "Our pricing is not in relation to competition. If the demand is more, we will not increase the fares but the number of flights," he told a two-day conference on synergising of air traffic control (ATC), airports and airlines, organised by the ATC Guild (India).

He said the airline, which recently slashed fares when other carriers raised them, was getting rich dividends from its operations on trunk routes where it dropped fares.

This was primarily due to the very high load factor, ranging between 90 and 100 per cent, on most of the days, he said, adding such load factor had led to cash positive results leading the airline to report profits.

Gopinath made a strong case for urgent revamp and expansion of airport infrastructure in the country saying, for low cost operations to succeed, a faster turnaround for each aircraft was required.

"We need to turn around the aircraft (from landing to take off) within a quick span of 25 minutes", he said while pointing out that the "unprecedented" increase in passenger traffic in the next few years would prove a "disaster" if speedy action was not taken to expand and improve airport and all related infrastructure, including more parking bays for aircraft and additional runways.

Another major initiative taken by Air Deccan was to introduce dedicated automated machines at airports, where a passenger can himself generate his boarding pass without being attended by any airline staff. "The first such machine will be installed at Bangalore airport in the next two months", Gopinath said.

Inaugurating the conference, heavy industries Minister Sontosh Mohan Dev said India was poised to set up its own passenger aircraft manufacturing industry in the near future and sought "robust planning" as well as synergy between the three A's – air traffic control, airports and airlines.

Airports Authority of India chairman K Ramalingam elaborated on the steps being taken to modernise and upgrade facilities and aviation technologies in India and said a new space-based air navigation system, Project Gagan, would be in place by 2008.

Work on the first phase was already on. The project, being implemented by AAI and Indian Space Research Organisation, would place India in a select world league of four with US, Europe and Japan, which are in the process of implementing similar space-based projects.

Ramalingam also stressed the urgent need for speedy modernisation of airport infrastructure across the country, forecasting that the passenger traffic would grow from the present 25 million to 100 million by 2010.

The Indian ATC handles aircraft movement across 3.2 million square kilometres of airspace, which had 79 international and 99 domestic air routes.

Former director general of civil aviation, H S Khola, representatives from international civil aviation organisation and those from other world bodies as well as Singapore's Changi Airport are participating in the conference.