Akasa Air's flight cancellations, delayed refunds frustrate passengers

Akasa Air

Akasa Air, the newest airline in India, appears to be going through turbulence.

Passengers have complained about the airline’s flight cancellations, unresponsive customer care, and delayed refunds. The trouble for the airline comes amid a shortage of pilots, short-term grounding of aircraft to fit in new seats, and restructuring of its network.

The airline cancelled 15 flights in Karnataka and Kerala alone in August and delayed eight flights by two hours, people close to Akasa Air said. Social media had been flooded with complaints of flight cancellations and delayed refunds.

Many passengers said they were informed about the cancellations only a few days before the journey, and were forced to book costlier, alternative flights. Some passengers claimed Akasa Air has been notorious for rescheduling flights citing operational reasons.

While most of the complaints were related to flights on the Bengaluru-Kochi sector, other sectors were also affected.

"I booked three tickets from Mumbai to Goa for August 27. But Akasa Air sent me a message on August 14 stating that the flight schedule will be advanced to 12:15 pm instead of the scheduled 5:45 pm,” Divya Sharma, a brand strategist based in Goa, told Moneycontrol.

“I had a meeting in the afternoon, and I tried to contact them through various mediums like email, social media, and phone, but they did not respond."

Emails sent to Akasa Air remained unanswered at the time of publishing.

Turbulence at Akasa Air

Akasa Air’s operations were affected by issues including a shortage of pilots and grounded planes in August.

“Akasa Air has faced an issue of pilots not serving their notice period after quitting, due to which some rostering issues have caused flight cancellations. These issues will be resolved soon," an Akasa Air executive told Moneycontrol.

Another executive told Moneycontrol that some of the airline's planes were being fitted with new seats.

"We have grounded some planes temporarily to fit them with new seats and these planes are expected to return to service in September," the second executive said.

Eleven of Akasa Air's 20 planes are not configured as per the airline's original plans and will be fitted with new seats in the next few months.

According to industry sources, Akasa Air is sending two planes at a time for seat reconfiguration. Two planes were grounded at a time since the second week of August, and so far, four planes have been reconfigured, industry sources said. The 11 aforementioned planes have 12 spacious seats that are sold for a premium price.

Akasa Air adopted a temporary seating plan for its aircraft as seat supplies were hit by disruptions due to the pandemic. Akasa is also restructuring its network, which resulted in aircraft availability issues, a senior airline executive said.

"Akasa is restructuring its domestic network in line with its strategy to create a dedicated customer base and maintain profitable operations. As the network stabilises and planes are aligned, some network issues have arisen."

He added that the issues have been resolved and problems should not persist beyond the first week of September.

Akasa Air started operating in August 2022. Its cancellation rate was 0.45 percent in July, lower than the overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines of 0.75 percent, according to data on the website of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.

Two passengers were denied boarding in July, while another 1,249 were affected by flight cancellations, and 4,385 were delayed by more than two hours, according to data submitted by the airline to the DGCA.

Passengers blame airline

At least two passengers complained on social media site X that the airline cancelled their flights that were later found to be operational.

"Is all this a scam to bump off travellers who booked early at low prices so that they can get more late bookers at higher fares?" asked Shivani, a passenger, in a post on X.

Sunil Paryani, a passenger, said he was told two days before about the cancellation of his flight. He urged the civil aviation ministry to take action.

Shashank Agarwal said he didn't get a refund for more than 20 days from the airline and there was no response from the airline.

Responding to posts on X, Akasa wrote: "Our Akasa care center is experiencing higher than usual call volumes. We regret the inconvenience this has caused you."

Akasa Air has carried over 3.5 million passengers so far in 2023 and has a market share of 4 percent, according to DGCA data.