Summary
- Akasa Air is working to interchange the spacious but premium-priced seats on 11 of its aircraft with a typical configuration.
- The choice to have standard seating aligns with Akasa’s low-cost model and makes operations easier for the airline.
- Akasa Air may also receive Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 aircraft, which maximize space and accommodate more passengers than a typical 737 MAX 8.
Indian carrier Akasa Air has at all times maintained that it’s a budget airline meant to attach smaller cities and towns in India with reasonably priced fares. But a few of its planes even have several spacious seats that don’t quite align with a low-cost business model. While the airline was stuck with this configuration on some aircraft as a result of supply-chain issues, it has not began to interchange those seats for a typical configuration.
Back to straightforward configuration
In a bit over a yr of operations, Akasa Air has rapidly grown to a 20-aircraft fleet, with more planes to are available in the approaching months and years. Nevertheless, 11 of its current planes are usually not within the configurations originally desired by the airline and have 12 spacious seats which are sold for a premium price.
Photo: Akasa Air
These planes were originally meant for other airlines, and Akasa took advantage of the chance to get as many aircraft as possible to expand its network. Issues with the worldwide supply chain meant that the it couldn’t get these seats replaced in time and went ahead with them temporarily. Nevertheless it has began to reconfigure those planes now, with businessline quoting Akasa’s CEO Vinay Dube as saying,
All-economy seating
Indeed, despite the spacious seats being well-received by passengers, Akasa’s decision to have standard seating has merit. Having a consistent product across the fleet makes operations easy for an airline.
In case a plane must be swapped on the last minute, switching from an aircraft that gives premium seats to 1 that’s all-economy may end up in passenger dissatisfaction, resulting in refunds from the carrier. Spacious seats also don’t align with Akasa’s core business strategy of a low-cost model, making a mismatch between passenger expectations and the airline’s offering. An individual acquainted with the event said,
Maximizing space use
The brand new planes set to hitch Akasa Air will come equipped with much more seats. The airline recently received its twentieth aircraft, making it eligible for international operations. However the plane was special in additional ways than one.
It was the primary of several higher-density Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 planes that can proceed to hitch its fleet. With this, Akasa became the primary airline in Asia so as to add the MAX 8-200 version of the sort when the aircraft (VT-YAV) landed in Bengaluru on August 1st.
Photo: Akasa Air | Twitter
A specially configured high-density variant of the 737 MAX 8, the sort is already in use with Ryanair. It will possibly seat several more passengers than a standard MAX 8. For example, Ryanair’s Max 200s can accommodate 197 passengers versus around 175 on an everyday MAX 8.
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