AirAsia starts flights from Delhi to Bengaluru, Goa, Guwahati today

May 21, 2015

New Delhi, May 21: Budget carrier AirAsia India will spread its wings to the national capital with the launch of its services from New Delhi on Thursday, nearly a year after it commenced operations in the country.

The airline had last month, while announcing its plans to operate services from the Indira Gandhi International Airport here, had said that New Delhi would serve as its hub for the North India market.

As of now, the domestic arm of the Malaysian no-frills airline AirAsia flies to Chennai, Kochi, Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur, Pune from its Bengaluru base.

The airline would launch flights to Bengaluru, Goa and Guwahati from New Delhi.

AirAsia India on this occasion organised a pre-launch special patch flight for prominent personalities here to give them a special onboard flight experience.

Among those guests on the special short flight included Civil Aviation Minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju, his deputy Mahesh Sharma, AirAsia India board member Arun Bhatia, airline's non-executive chairman Ramadorai and several ministry officials besides AirAsia India chief executive Mittu Chandilya.

"We are very excited to step into Delhi. The celebration today is the result of constant hard work, meticulous planning and undying dedicated spirit of our team. I would like to thank everyone associated with AirAsia India for the support. We hope to enable more people to experience air travel in India," Chandilya said.

The budget carrier had deployed an aircraft "Pioneer" named after the pioneer of Indian aviation JRD Tata, with a special livery dedicated to him to celebrate his contribution in the field.

"We are happy to welcome AirAsia India to IGI Airport. It is only fitting that a top rated carrier like AirAsia has chosen Delhi Airport as a hub for its operations. We will support the airline end to end," Delhi International Airport Private Limited chief executive I Prabhakara Rao said.

AirAsia India is three-way joint venture with AirAsia holding 49 percent stake while the other two partners-Tata Sons and Telestra Trade Place of Atrun Bhatia-holding 30 and 21 percent stake respectively.

The country's fourth low-cost carrier had commenced operations on 12 June last year. It has a fleet of five Airbus A320 planes.

Comments

Add new comment

Coastaldigest.com reserves the right to delete or block any comments.
Coastaldigset.com is not responsible for its readers’ comments.
Comments that are abusive, incendiary or irrelevant are strictly prohibited.
Please use a genuine email ID and provide your name to avoid reject.

IndiGo CEO says less than 1,000 cancellations on Dec 6; normalcy by Dec 15

News Network

December 5,2025

New Delhi, Dec 5: IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers issued a public apology this evening after more than a thousand flights were cancelled today, making it the "most severely impacted day" in terms of cancellations. The biggest airline of the country cancelled "more than half" of its daily number of flights on Friday, said Elbers. He also said that even though the crisis will persist on Saturday, the airline anticipates fewer than 1,000 flight cancellations.

"Full normalisation is expected between December 10 and 15, though IndiGo cautions that recovery will take time due to the scale of operations," the IndiGo CEO said.

IndiGo operates around 2,300 domestic and international flights daily.

Pieter Elbers, while apologising for the major inconvenience due to delays and cancellations, said the situation is a result of various causes.

The crisis at IndiGo stems from new regulations that boost pilots' weekly rest requirements by 12 hours to 48 and allow only two night-time landings per week, down from six. IndiGo has attributed the mass cancellations to "misjudgment and planning gaps".

Elbers also listed three lines of action that the airline will adopt to address the issue.

"Firstly, customer communication and addressing your needs, for this, messages have been sent on social media. And just now, a more detailed communication with information, refunds, cancellations and other customer support measures was sent," he said.

The airline has also stepped up its call centre capacity.

"Secondly, due to yesterday's situation, we had customers stranded mostly at the nation's largest airports. Our focus was for all of them to be able to travel today itself, which will be achieved. For this, we also ask customers whose flights are cancelled not to come to the airports as notifications are sent," the CEO said.

"Thirdly, cancellations were made for today to align our crew and planes to be where they need to start tomorrow morning afresh. Earlier measures of the last few days, regrettable, have proven not to be enough, but we have decided today to reboot all our systems and schedules, resulting in the highest numbers of cancellations so far, but imperative for progressive improvements starting from tomorrow," he added.

As airports witnessed chaotic scenes, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) stepped in to grant IndiGo a temporary exemption from stricter night duty rules for pilots. It also allowed substitution of leaves with a weekly rest period.

Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu has said a high-level inquiry will be ordered and accountability will be fixed.

Comments