Akasa Air has maintained for a very long time that it won’t wait too long to begin operating international flights. And evidently it’s preparing well to execute those plans, with its CEO recently commenting that the airline will hire tons of of latest employees to support its upcoming overseas operations. Akasa isn’t even a yr old but has made significant strides in network and fleet expansion, and starting international flights looks as if a logical next step.
Gearing up for international expansion
Indian low-cost carrier Akasa Air plans to extend its workforce significantly because it gets able to fly overseas within the near future. Its CEO Vinay Dube recently told Bloomberg that the airline plans to rent as much as 800 latest employees by the tip of this financial yr to support its expansion into international destinations.
Photo: Akasa Air
Akasa operates a fleet of Boeing 737 MAX planes, which implies that it would look to fly to medium-haul international destinations. Dube said that the airline is planning to fly to the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and other parts of South Asia, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Bangladesh with a single-class configuration.
The airline will compete with just about all major Indian in addition to international carriers to woo customers for these highly-competitive markets. But given its success within the last yr, and the rising demand for travel out of India, it’s prone to attract passengers for its latest services.
20-aircraft rule
There’s, nevertheless, one condition that Akasa Air has to fulfill before being allowed to begin overseas flights. Government rules dictate that an airline will need to have a fleet of no less than 20 aircraft before it may well be granted permission to fly abroad.
Photo: Akasa Air
Currently, Akasa has 19 Boeing 737 MAX planes, but it surely expects the delivery of its twentieth plane soon. The airline is lucky that it operates at a time when the previous 5/20 rule will not be in place anymore. Earlier, a brand new Indian airline was required to not only have a minimum of 20 planes in its fleet but in addition to operate domestically for five years before applying for overseas flights.
Domestic expansion
Meanwhile, Akasa has steadily increased its presence in India and now commands a market share of just about 5%. In June, it carried greater than 600,000 passengers, beating SpiceJet, which has been in business for over a decade.
Much of it was also due to gap left behind by the grounding of Go First, with various airlines increasing frequencies on certain routes to fulfill a sudden rise in demand. There have been reports of Akasa eyeing a number of the slots that Go First will likely quit.
Photo: Akasa Air
As competition heats up and airlines try to accumulate and even retain their valued employees, particularly cockpit crew, Akasa Air even hiked the salaries of its pilots by as much as 40%. The airline has also revised its fixed pay hours to 40 from 45, which implies that a pilot will get extra money as fixed salary for 40 hours of duty.
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