Akasa Air and Adani Airport Holdings (AAHL) have signed an agreement to commence commercial flight operations from the upcoming Navi Mumbai International Airport (NMIA).
The airline will start operations with 15 flight departures a day and by the winter schedule, it expects to move to 40 domestic departures and about 8-10 international departures, said Vinay Dube, founder and CEO, Akasa Air.
Between the Mumbai airport, where the airline has close to 32 departures, and the Navi Mumbai airport, it expects to have 75-80 departures.
While AAHL has not provided a date yet for the opening of NMIA, the operator, which is the second largest in the country (in terms of passengers serviced), had announced a similar partnership with IndiGo for starting commercial flight operations last month.
“The dates are fluid. We are working with NMIA to see what those dates are. The information that we have been provided for the launch (of the airport) date is the end of August,” Dube said.
“No airline in India will have a larger percentage of its fleet and operations based out of NMIA than Akasa Air. This move supports our commitment to supplement existing capacities, unlock new demand centres, and enable sustainable growth,” Dube added.
There will be no immediate increase in the number of destinations that Akasa connects presently after starting operations at NMIA. The airline connects 28 destinations, including 5 international destinations.
Akasa will start undertaking bookings for flying to and from NMIA only after AAHL completes all the approvals, following which the flying schedule will be filed. Akasa did not specify if there will be a difference in cost for it to operate from NMIA compared to the Mumbai airport.
“There will be a set of permissions that will be required before we can start constructing elements of our back office that are required along the check-in area or to house certain maintenance spares that we may have, as we do in every other airport,” Dube added.
Akasa Air also announced it will operate over 100 weekly domestic departures initially, scaling up to more than 300 domestic and over 50 international departures weekly in the winter schedule.
As part of its broader network strategy, the airline is also set to ramp up to 10 parking bases by the end of FY27, with a focused international expansion into key West Asian and Southeast Asian markets.