The airline is backed by billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, known as "India's Warren Buffett", who has teamed up with former chief executives of IndiGo and Jet Airways to tap into rising long-term prospects for domestic air travel in India. The airline aims to have 18 aircraft within 12 months from launch and will have 72 planes in five years, Dube said, speaking at an air show in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
New Indian budget airline Akasa Air plans to launch its first commercial flight in June and is working to get all relevant licenses, Chief Executive Vinay Dube said on Friday.
The airline is backed by billionaire Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, known as "India's Warren Buffett", who has teamed up with former chief executives of IndiGo and Jet Airways to tap into rising long-term prospects for domestic air travel in India.
The airline aims to have 18 aircraft within 12 months from launch and will have 72 planes in five years, Dube said speaking at an air show in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad.
The carrier will fly within India. Dube did not say which cities it would serve.
In November last year, Akasa Air, which will compete with other Indian airlines like IndiGo and SpiceJet, placed an order for 72 Boeing 737 MAX jets, valued at nearly $9 billion at list prices.
Akasa Air received initial clearance from India's civil aviation ministry to start operations in October last year.
Hyderabad, Mar 25 (PTI) Expressing optimism about the civil aviation sector bouncing back following a difficult phase due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Union Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Friday said Indian airline operators are expected to add 110 to 120 new aircraft every year in the days to come.
Speaking at the inaugural session of Wings India 2022, a civil aviation show being held here, Scindia also said the airline operators need to include more wide-bodied aircraft in their fleet in order to connect several global points.
Exuding confidence that the air traffic figures will rebound, the minister said the number of domestic passengers is expected to touch 4.10 million per day by next year and will surpass that number by 2024-25.
"India is looking at tremendous expansion. Expansion in the area of airlines, expansion in the area of airports. And therefore, fleet augmentation is also important. A country that had a fleet of only 400 aircraft in the year 2013-14 has grown to a fleet of 710 aircraft in the last seven years, an addition of almost 310 aircraft. And we intend to add at least 110 to 220 aircraft per year as we go forward," Scindia said.
A senior official of Airbus on Thursday said the European aircraft maker expects that India will need over 2,200 airplanes in the next two decades.
According to him, currently, India has about 9,000 pilots and out of whom, 15 percent are women, way ahead of the global benchmark of five percent.
On airlines' traffic figures, Scindia said domestic air traffic which was at 3.9 million passengers per day fell to 1.16 million during the third wave under the Omicron variant of COVID-19. However, the numbers bounced back to 3.83 million as of now close to the pre-COVID number of 4.1 million passengers per day.
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