AirAsia India setting up hub in Delhi

Nearly 10 months after its launch, budget carrier AirAsia India is looking to enter into its rival and the country’s largest player IndiGo’s territory, setting up a hub in Delhi with plans to induct two more A320s.

The airline’s decision to enter a highly competitive market could also be because of the need to take a pie of a lucrative sector in an attempt to shore-up its week bottomline.

The airline is expected to hire at least 60 crew members, including 20 pilots, as part of the plan.

In an internal note to its staff, AirAsia said it will be setting up a hub in Delhi and invited applications from captains and first officers interested in taking a transfer to Delhi.

Opening a base in the North might be a prudent thing to do for the airline which has so far confined itself to a hub in Bengaluru.

For long haul flights, especially from the North, having the crew stationed around the hub makes sense instead of ferrying them back and forth.

For example, Delhi-Bengaluru is best served with morning departures from either destination, mirroring the direction at the same time. This ensures better service for the corporate clients. This will require AirAsia India to park an aircraft overnight at Delhi, necessitating a base. Bengaluru will continue to be the home base.

Flying on the Delhi-Bengaluru route will make the airline accumulate category (CAT I ) I route capacity, as defined by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Every flight from Delhi to Bangalore roughly picks up 1900 km X 180 seats = 3,42,000 ASKM (available seat km).

Once an airline flies a CAT I route, it will necessarily have to deploy 50 per cent of the CAT I capacity on Category III routes, 10 per cent of CAT I capacity on Category II routes, and 1 per cent of CAT I capacity on Category IIA routes.According to the route dispersal guidelines, CAT II routes include flights to Agatti (in Lakshadweep where an Airbus cannot land), and Port Blair (where an Airbus can land). But South India has no Category IIA routes. These routes are for routes within ‘neglected’ regions. Example of CAT IIA routes are Jammu - Srinagar, Bagdogra - Guwahati.

To Fly CAT IIA, AirAsia India will have no option but to fly in the North, or North-East.

The airline will also need to beef up crew capacity. For a single Airbus A 320, a low-cost carrier requires 10 pilots, which include five captains and an equal number of first officers. It will also require 20 cabin crew, including five senior crew. In a presentation to its investors recently, the airline said that it would deploy at least two A320s. Of that, AirAsia India already has an A320 parked near Bengaluru with a special livery dedicated to JRD Tata, the father of Indian aviation. This will be deployed soon once Delhi is formally made into a hub.

AirAsia India has withdrawn its Bengaluru-Chennai flights citing poor traffic. Nearly 50 per cent of airlines in the country have suspended flights between these cities for the same reason.

COMMENT NOW