MC Interview |Akasa Air not chasing market share, focused on service excellence: CEO Vinay Dube

Vinay Dube, CEO, Akasa AIr

Akasa Air, India's newest commercial carrier, does not plan to engage in predatory pricing and compete with incumbent carriers to increase its market share quickly, rather the airline will focus on improving the quality of its service, the airline's chief executive officer Vinay Dube said.

"To be very honest we are not chasing market share. We are chasing service excellence. And if you look at our on-time performance, we are number one in November, number one in December, and we're number one in January as well," Dube told Moneycontrol on the sidelines of Wings India 2024, Asia’s largest civil aviation exhibition, in Hyderabad.

He said that Akasa Air takes pride in the service that it delivers to customers in terms of reliability, food, legroom, on-time performance, and the empathy and warmth of its staff.

"We're hyper-focused on reliability," Dube said, adding that Akasa Air will continue to be India's most on-time carrier.

Dube also said that despite the recent scrutiny the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft have received after the Alaska Air incident, Akasa Air was confident of the aircraft it operates and the 150 new planes it has placed an order for.

"We don't have any concerns with (the Boeing 737 Max planes). We don't fly the MAX 9, we fly the MAX 8. We're flying a very standard MAX 8 that's been in production for a long time. And we're highly confident in what we're showing," Dube said.

He also said that Akasa Air does not plan to operate any plugged door flights and the issue found in Boeing 737 MAX 9 planes was in plugged door aircraft.

Dube said that Akasa Air operates two kinds of aircraft at the moment, the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and the Boeing 737 MAX 8-200, and going forward will take delivery of Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 and Boeing 737 MAX 10 planes.

He also said that Akasa Air will take delivery of 51 more Boeing 737 MAX 8-200 and two more Boeing 737 MAX 8 planes as part of its initial order for 75 planes by mid-2027, following which its new order for 150 planes will start and deliveries will continue till mid-2032.

Dube said Akasa Air is ready to start flying to international destinations soon and is ready from the business and operational side but is waiting for regulatory approvals from foreign governments.

Going forward the configuration of Akasa Air's cabins will remain the same for both the Boeing 737 MAX 8 and the Boeing 737 MAX 8-200, he said.

"We will have single-cabin aircraft. We think highly service oriented single-class cabin service is the best business model for us," Dube said.

The big plane order

Akasa Air on January 18 placed a firm order of 150 Boeing 737 MAX aircraft at WINGS India 2024, Hyderabad.

The order, which consists of 737 MAX 10 and 737 MAX 8-200 jets, will provide the airline with a steady aircraft delivery stream through 2032, cementing the company’s domestic and international expansion plans.

This is the third biggest plane order by Indian carriers in the last year as they expect the country’s aviation sector to become one of the largest in the world.

IndiGo in June last year placed a firm order for 500 Airbus A320 family aircraft. This deal overtook Tata Group-owned Air India’s mammoth order of 470 aircraft from Boeing and Airbus placed in March 2023.

While Akasa has not announced the deal value, analysts tracking the sector peg the current order at $15-20 billion.

Sufficient number of pilots

The new flight duty time limitation (FDTL) norms will not affect Akasa Air's flight schedule as it has hired a sufficient number of pilots in the last six to nine months to handle the anticipated change, Dube said.

"Today, we've got well over 500 pilots. Well over. I mean, maybe close to 600...We've got enough pilots to fly double the amount of aircraft that we have," Dube said, adding that the airline is looking forward to start flying to Port Blair, Riyadh, Jeddah, and Doha soon.

In a bid to ensure better fatigue management, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on January 8 revamped the FDTL regulations.

The latest rules include additional rest for pilots, revision of night duty regulations, and directions for airlines to submit pilot fatigue reports. The regulator has mandated airline operators to comply with the new notification by June 1 this year.

The new mandate has increased weekly rest periods for flight crew to 48 hours a week from the previous 36 hours.

The definition of 'night' in the FDTL regulations has also been tweaked. Previously, night was defined as the time between midnight and 5 am. But now, night will cover the time between midnight and 6 am, giving flight crew an extra hour of rest during the early morning.