India’s Akasa Air expands network

India’s Akasa Air announced its entry into Uttar Pradesh with the addition of Lucknow as the 11th destination to join the airline’s fast-growing network. The airline will be offering daily flights on the Lucknow-Bengaluru route and Lucknow-Mumbai route, starting from 25 December. In line with its vision of establishing a strong pan-India presence focusing on the metro to tier 2 & 3 route connectivity, the airline is also enhancing connectivity between Bengaluru and Kochi by adding a third daily frequency on the route starting 29 December. With this development, the airline will operate 26 daily flight departures from Bengaluru. Praveen Iyer, Co-Founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Akasa Air, said, “As India’s fastest growing airline we are pleased to launch our 11th destination Lucknow with daily flights connecting Lucknow-Bengaluru and Lucknow-Mumbai starting December 25, 2022. Lucknow is renowned for its rich culture, architecture, and cuisine while being an established textile and an emerging automobile hub. Connecting this state capital with the key centres of Mumbai and Bengaluru is another extension of our efforts to boost the country’s economy by strengthening its important transportation linkages and is in line with our objective to add new flights every 2-3 weeks. In addition to this, we are augmenting our presence on the Bengaluru-Kochi route by adding a frequency in the evening, in response to the strong demand for flights connecting the two cities.” Akasa Air, which commenced operations in August, has been progressively scaling up its operations and by December end expects to cross over 500 weekly flights on a total of sixteen routes across eleven cities – Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Kochi, Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi, Guwahati, Agartala, Pune, Visakhapatnam, and Lucknow. It will continue to grow its network to establish a strong pan-India presence with a focus on metro to tier 2 & 3 route connectivity, using a fleet expansion plan that adds one new aircraft every 15 days. Akasa Air’s fleet size will be 18 aircraft by the end of March 2023 and over the next four years, the airline will add 54 additional aircraft, taking its total fleet size to 72 aircraft. For Editorial Inquiries Contact: Editor Matt Driskill at [email protected] For Advertising Inquiries Contact: Head of Sales Kay Rolland at [email protected]