Reaffirming Akasa Air’s commitment to being an employee-centric organisation, CEO Vinay Dube emphasised the airline’s ongoing efforts to maintain and improve its high safety standards amid recent concerns raised by some pilots regarding alleged training and safety issues.
Last week, a section of pilots had raised concerns about the airline’s training and safety protocols, which Akasa Air swiftly dismissed as baseless and untrue. Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) recently issued two show-cause notices to the airline for operational lapses.
Addressing the concerns, Dube, who is also the airline’s founder, stressed that Akasa Air prides itself on fostering a high level of employee satisfaction. “We continue to look at how we can build from the high levels of satisfaction without being complacent at all… our pilots have given extremely good feedback, our pilots are extremely satisfied and we continue to find ways to make sure that we are not complacent,” he said.
“Safety is Akasa’s priority, world class safety… We always look at ways in which we can continue to improve ourselves… this is a continous procedure. We look at our processes, procedures, training, structures, reporting,” Dube told PTI in an interview.
Akasa Air currently serves 27 destinations, including five international cities, and held a domestic market share of 4.5% in October. The airline, which has been in operation for over two-and-a-half years, currently runs a fleet of 26 aircraft and employs around 4,300 staff members, including approximately 800 pilots.
On pilot recruitment, Dube clarified that the airline is not hiring additional pilots at the moment. “We have a sufficient number of pilots to support our foreseeable expansion,” he said.
Dube highlighted Akasa Air’s use of data-driven insights to gauge and improve employee satisfaction. “We always run surveys at Akasa to understand (employee) satisfaction and we have always said that our pilots have provided extremely satisfactory feedback… on an annualised basis, attrition is less than 1 per cent (pilots). These are the facts,” Dube added.
The airline previously announced that 324 pilots joined Akasa Air since October 2023, further reinforcing its strong workforce stability.
In response to the December 11 letter written by some pilots to Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu, calling for an independent review of the airline’s management practices, training methods, and safety standards, Dube reiterated Akasa Air’s proactive approach.
“It is impossible to build an employee-centric culture without proactively having employee feedback… we are extremely action-oriented on the specific feedback we get,” Dube concluded.