Akasa Air will consider flights to Kenya, Egypt, other countries; feels 'very good' about Boeing delivery schedule: CEO

New Delhi: Akasa Air will consider operating flights to Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt and some other countries, and the three-year-old airline now feels "very good" about the delivery schedule for its Boeing planes, according to its CEO Vinay Dube.

Stressing that Akasa Air's international expansion will continue on the right path, Dube, also the founder, said the airline will shortly announce flights to Sharjah.

The airline has a fleet of 30 Boeing 737 MAX planes and expects to add "more than one aircraft" this year.

"Our aircraft are capable of hitting the shores of East Africa, absolutely it can go to Mauritius and on the southern side, it can go to Kenya, Ethiopia, Egypt... We can (also) go into Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan... Boeing 737 MAX is also capable of going deep into South Asia..., All will be considered," Dube told PTI in an interview.

Currently, the carrier flies to six international cities -- Doha (Qatar), Jeddah, Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Abu Dhabi (UAE), Kuwait City (Kuwait) and Phuket (Thailand) -- and 24 domestic destinations.

According to Dube, the airline's Available Seat Kilometres (ASK) is now 20 per cent international and 80 per cent domestic, and the overseas pie is expected to reach around 30 per cent by the end of March 2027.

Generally, ASK is a measure of an airline's passenger carrying capacity.

The airline, which has 750-775 pilots, expects to restart hiring of pilots in 2026, mainly first officers.

"We will have a need for pilots in the second half of next year. So, we will have to restart the (hiring) process well before that... We feel very good about our delivery schedule, we have more predictability," Dube said during the interview in the national capital.

There has been a delay in deliveries of the Boeing 737 MAX planes and earlier this month, the US Federal Aviation Administration allowed the aircraft maker to increase the production of MAX aircraft to 42 from 38 per month.

The airline has a firm order for a total of 226 Boeing 737 MAX planes.

Akasa Air expects to have some codeshare and interline partnerships in the next financial year, with Dube emphasising that the airline needs to be a little bigger to be an attractive partner for a number of codeshare, interline requirements that other airlines have.

Currently, the airline has a codeshare partnership with Etihad Airways.

Generally, a codeshare partnership allows an airline to book passengers on its partner carrier in a single ticket. Under an interline arrangement, an airline issues and accepts tickets for flights operated by partner carriers, and the passengers will have a single itinerary but different tickets.

About the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) flagging certain lapses at the airline, Dube said all the observations have been addressed to the satisfaction of the regulator.

"We had observations like every airline had observations as part of routine audits. All of these observations have been addressed to the satisfaction of the regulator and there is no cause for safety concern at all," he said.

On funding, the Akasa Air chief said the airline is well-capitalised and will look at an Initial Public Offering (IPO) in the next two to five years.

In August, the carrier announced it raised funds from various investors, including Premji Invest and Claypond Capital, and that the money would be utilised mainly for expanding operations.

Regarding any plans for having wide-body and regional aircraft as well as changing seat configuration, Dube said it keeps evaluating and emphasised that the airline is driven by economic sense.

"... If we think it is sustainably positive for us, then we will jump into the wide-body mix but so far our analysis is not one where we have concluded for us (that) it is sustainably positive." The airline offers only economy class in its planes.