World Class Safety Is Akasa Air’s Priority: CEO Dube

Last week, some pilots had raised concerns about alleged training and safety issues at Akasa Air, and the airline had rejected them as baseless and untrue. Recently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued at least two showcause notices for certain lapses

Asserting that Akasa Air is an employee-centric organisation, its CEO Vinay Dube has said the airline always works on improving its very high safety standards, amid some pilots flagging concerns about alleged training and safety issues. The little over two-and-a-half year-old carrier, which operates a fleet of 26 planes, has around 4,300 employees, including about 800 pilots.

"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 in an interview.

Last week, some pilots had raised concerns about alleged training and safety issues at Akasa Air, and the airline had rejected them as baseless and untrue. Recently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) issued at least two showcause notices for certain lapses. Dube, the airline's founder and CEO, said the situation for the airline, which is "genuinely employee-centric", is that there are high levels 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.

Akasa Air, which flies to 27 destinations, including five international cities, had a domestic market share of 4.5 per cent in October. According to Dube, the airline is not hiring more pilots now as there are "sufficient number of pilots for our foreseeable expansion".

To assess and further improve employee satisfaction levels, Dube said the airline also deploys a lot of data and analytics.

"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 said.

Last week, Akasa Air said 324 pilots joined the airline since October 2023, and during this period, it has recorded an annualised attrition of less than 1 per cent for this employee group. In a letter dated December 11, written to Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu, the section of the pilots had sought an independent probe into the airline's management practices, training methods and safety standards.

"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 said in the interview.