UK NRI buys Air Slovakia for Amritsar-Europe route

London, October 15, 2006
Mohan Bhalla
NRI press

UK-based, NRI Harjinder Singh Sidhu has bought Air Slovakia, European airline for an undisclosed amount. He said, "We have Slovakian airhostesses who speak with the passengers in Punjabi. It's an amazing achievement, because Slovakians don't speak English, but here they are speaking Punjabi.”

On October 14, passengers on the Air Slovakia flight from Cologne to Amritsar that touched down would be forgiven to think for a moment that ‘Balle Balle’ was a more apt name for this airline. The entire flight have had ‘Punjabi’ written all over it.

Mr. Sidhu's son Riqbal 'Rocky' Singh told reporters that the airline would ba a first of its kind with an all-Punjabi experience on the Amritsar-Europe route. Sidhu wants to transform airline into a "Punjabi experience" - using crew, food and in-flight entertainment from Punjab.

"The bulk of our passengers are from Punjab and Punjabis from Europe. So we want to brand Air Slovakia as an airline with Punjabi ambience and flavour. Our stewards, airhostesses will be from Punjab as also the in-flight food," Riqbal Sidhu, Harjinder's son, who's president of the airline, says the aim is to create a Punjabi Airline for expat Punjabi communities around the world. The regional headquarters of Air Slovakia will be in Jalandhar, Punjab.

Now airline has 2 Boeing 757s and 1 Boeing 737 in its fleet and will add six more aircraft to the fleet in 2007. The airline has a 60 members of staff. The air fare for the Amritsar- Birmingham sector would be Rs.23,000.

Mr. Sidhu wants to link places like Barcelona, Athens, Amsterdam, Glasgow, Paris and other European cities with Amritsar. Later destinations would include cities in Canada, Britain.