Akasa Air launches maiden flights from Delhi, to allow pets in the cabin

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(L-R) Belson Coutinho, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing & Experience Officer, Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Priya Mehra, General Counsel and Chief Governance Officer, Aditya Ghosh Co-Founder and Harjinder Singh Bhasin, Vice President Airports and the inflight team from Akasa Air along with Sanjiv Edward, Chief Commercial Officer, Delhi International Airport at the launch of Akasa Air’s maiden flight from New Delhi on October 07, 2022.

After the completion of two months of its operations, Akasa Air is set to establish Delhi as the sixth destination on its network and inaugurate its first flight on the Delhi-Bengaluru and Delhi-Ahmedabad routes on October 7.

The airline also announced Pets-on-Board, a pet-friendly service in line with its commitment to create an inclusive travel experience.

Both the new routes will be served with daily flights in each direction. The airline has announced eight destinations so far, including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kochi, Chennai, Delhi, Agartala and Guwahati being covered with 11 non-stop routes.

Akasa Air, India’s newest airline, has completed the first two months of its commercial journey in building India’s greenest, most dependable, and most affordable airline.

(L-R) Priya Mehra, General Counsel and Chief Governance, Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Aditya Ghosh Co-Founder, Belson Coutinho, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing & Experience Officer and Harjinder Singh Bhasin, Vice President Airports from Akasa Air along with Sanjiv Edward, Chief Commercial Officer, Delhi International Airport presenting the inaugural boarding pass to the first passenger during the launch of Akasa Air’s maiden flight from New Delhi on October 07, 2022.

Speaking at an event to mark the airline’s first 60 days of operations, Vinay Dube, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Akasa Air said, “Our first two months have been very exciting and satisfying as we moved from planning to commercial operations. We have been hyper focussed on establishing and delivering an empathetic, dependable, and reliable flying experience unlike anything witnessed in the Indian skies thus far”.

Commenting on the rapid network expansion, Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder, and Chief Commercial Officer, Akasa Air, said “We are elated by the response we have received as we welcomed on board more than 100,000 passengers within just 60 days of operations. Further strengthening our domestic connectivity and catering to more flyers during the festive season, we are delighted to be able to add Delhi to our network and connect the capital city to the rapidly growing and vibrant cities of Bengaluru and Ahmedabad. By expanding our network with an aircraft arriving every 15 days, we aim to fulfil our goal of developing a strong pan-India presence and expect to operate 300 weekly flights by October end.”

Speaking on product, service and customer experience, Belson Coutinho, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing & Experience Officer, Akasa Air said, “We set out with a promise to be a dependable airline focussing on warm, efficient, and reliable service”. As we continue with our vision to create an inclusive and humane travel experience, Akasa’s pet-friendly service will commence from 1st November 2022, wherein passengers flying on Akasa Air will be able to travel with their pets in the cabin. Taking an additional step to ease the travel experience of pet parents and their wards, we have joined hands with Umeed for Animals Foundation to ensure smooth pet-friendly travel”, he added.

Akasa Air has been progressively expanding its network across the country, in a phased approach with a commitment towards making travel accessible in India through the introduction of routes in Tier 2 and 3 cities. The company has recently received its sixth aircraft and will have a fleet size of 18 aircraft by the end of March 2023. Over the next four years, the airline will add 54 additional aircraft, taking its total fleet size to 72 aircraft. Boeing 737-800 MAX planes.

The new entrant in the Indian airline space began operations on August 7 and also plans to begin international flights by the end of the year. Recently, the company completed 60 days of operation.

Akasa has also increased the competition between airline players especially since the government withdrew fare caps on 31 August. Reportedly, competition has become very intense with Akasa offering Mumbai-Ahmedabad flight tickets for just ₹1,400 which led to Go First further reducing fares further to ₹1,000 on a route that usually sees fares ranging from ₹4,000 to ₹5,000.

However, Akasa co-founder and chief commercial officer Praveen Iyer in an interview said, “Our goal is not to dump capacity and, as a result, dump pricing. Our objective is to be sustainable long-term players. Even the routes we operate are pretty mature and stable, and need capacity. That’s exactly the reason we have managed to hit reasonable load factors in such a short span of time. So, there is no intent to trigger a price war either in action or on paper, absolutely not,”