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India’s low-cost airline Akasa Air has got permission to fly on international routes.
Sources said that the airline is likely to start international flights by December with first destinations in the Middle East countries.
The government has yet to allot traffic rights, following which it will have to gain approval from the respective countries.
Flying rights are allocated on a bilateral reciprocal basis by the government to airlines of their country.
Traffic rights have been fully utilised on major India-Middle routes like Dubai, Doha.
Airlines cannot operate more flights than they are allotted.
The license to fly international routes is a big boost to the airline seeking to spread its wings.
International routes are more profitable due to less competition. Also, the utilisation of aircraft improves, as aircraft operate on longer routes.
Airlines were earlier required to fly for at least five years on domestic routes, and have a fleet of 20 aircraft before being allowed to fly international.
The five year experience requirement was dropped in the 2016 when a new civil aviation policy was unveiled.
Vistara, which started business in August last year, now serves 16 destinations operating over 900 flights a week with a fleet of 20 Boeing 737 Max aircraft.
Besides the 20, the airline has 56 more 737 Max on order.
The airline has rapidly expanded adding 20 aircraft in less than a year since it started business last August.
In a short period, it had captured 5% market share surpassing SpiceJet, which has not been able to expand due to financial crisis.
However a spat of resignation of 43 pilots within 2 months has led to a crisis.
The airline lost market share of over 1% cancelling over 630 flights in August.
The airline has moved Bombay High Court against the pilots saying that the resignations doesn’t stand as the pilots didn’t serve a notice period of 6 months which was part of their employment contract
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