Akasa vs pilots: The inside story
New Delhi: In August, Akasa Air completed a year of flying. Ever since the pandemic, airline companies and engine makers have been grappling with supply-chain headwinds, globally. But Akasa Air flew past these troubles with ease.
Riding on strong demand for air travel, the airline grew to a fleet size of 20 aircraft by August and commanded a market share of 4.2% of the domestic skies. That’s a remarkable achievement—other entrants in the past decade, such as AirAsia India and Vistara, which had stronger promoter support, were able to garner a market share of under 2% in the first 12 month of operations. Just as everything was working to a plan, Akasa started running into problems it perhaps did not anticipate.
The airline had over 450 pilots. In July and August, about 43 of them, or nearly 10% of its pilot strength, resigned. Worse, they refused to serve the notice period, demanding to be relieved from service within two to three days.
This created an operational headache for the airline. Without a pilot, a plane can’t be flown. Flight cancellations and passenger angst followed.
In July, Akasa’s flight cancellation rate rose to 0.45% after being nil since March. It spiked to 1.17% in August, the highest for the month among all scheduled commercial passenger Indian airlines, data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Indian aviation’s regulatory body, showed. With a fleet of 19 aircraft, the airline was operating 900 weekly flights back then.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that around 65 flights were cancelled by the airline in these two months. The resignations were so sudden, the airline found it difficult to redeploy other pilots in time. Social media platform X, formerly Twitter, was flooded
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