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CEO Vinay Dube will have to take a leaf out of the market leader’s book on keeping costs down if he hopes to provide competition.

Editor's note: It would be normal to get up the morning after an unceremonial exit from your job with the feeling of having been wronged and the desire to hang up one’s boots. But what if one were to be inspired to prove oneself all over again? On 15 August 2020, a day after Vinay Dube ended a six-month CEO stint at Go First, he decided it was time to give wings to a life-long dream: start an airline. It didn’t matter that the country was in the midst of a lockdown, the aviation business was among the worst affected and airline owners and investors were wishing they had bet their money somewhere else. Dube seemed to care less. Now, two years down the line, India’s newest airline Akasa Air took off from Mumbai airport on its maiden flight to Ahmedabad on 7 August. In doing so, the airline’s 55-year-old founder CEO proved naysayers—who had wondered if someone who had spent years abroad with American Airlines and Delta Air Lines could navigate the highly regulated Indian aviation industry—wrong. It helped that in …
The Manoj Chacko-led regional airline has had a promising start. Will the lessons of the past keep it on course while it expands?
A drop in employee costs, despite the need to hire pilots under the new DGCA norms, raises fresh concerns about IndiGo’s staffing, and its vulnerability to a December 2025-scale disruption.
From airspace closures to fuel shocks, external factors expose deeper vulnerabilities at the Tata Sons-Singapore Airlines carrier.