AirAsia to fly from five more Indian cities by year-end

The airline is also pushing the Indian and Malaysian governments to conclude new bilateral agreements to enable direct flights from cities like Madurai, Coimbatore, and Pune and extend existing pacts to increase the number of flights on existing routes.

Chennai: Low-cost carrier AirAsia, which currently operates flights to Malaysia and Thailand from 14 Indian cities, plans to add five more locations from the country to its network by the end of 2024, a senior company official said on Tuesday.

The airline is also pushing the Indian and Malaysian governments to conclude new bilateral agreements to enable direct flights from cities like Madurai, Coimbatore, and Pune and extend the existing pacts to increase the number of flights on existing routes. 

“We are currently flying from 14 locations, and we will launch flights from Bhubaneswar and Visakhapatnam to Kuala Lumpur in the next 90 days. The services from Patna, Aurangabad, and Kozhikode will begin by the end of this year. We will reach 19 cities by the end of 2024,” Kesavan Sivanandam, AirAsia’s Chief Airport & Customer Experience Officer, said.

AirAsia controls 51% market share between India and Malaysia with India accounting for about 18% of the airline’s total revenues, Sivanandam said, adding the airline is also expanding its fleet worldwide by ordering 650 planes from Airbus. 

“We are traditionally strong in South India, though the north Indian market is also picking up. We want to launch more flights on the existing routes, including Bengaluru-Kuala Lumpur and Bengaluru-Bangkok, but exhaustion or lack of bilateral rights are coming in the way. South Indian routes have huge market potential,” Sivanandam told DH.

AirAsia, which already operates direct flights to Bangkok from Jaipur and Ahmedabad, will launch its services to Kuala Lumpur from these two cities from April 21 and May 1 respectively.

“We want the governments to work towards bilateral agreements which will be a boost to travelers in India. There is a lot of potential in India, and we would like to tap the growing market,” Sivanandam said.  

To a question, the top executive said AirAsia has no plans of investing in an Indian airline, years after it sold the Indian entity to Tata group which owns Air India.