Recently, the parent concern of AirAsia stopped all funding to the company. The joint venture between Tata Sons and AirAsia Berhad was looking up to the former for funding.
Contrary to the prevailing situation of the airlines industry and AirAsia in particular, the company foresees a sustained passenger demand to sustain its growth in the coming three months.
In addition, the company is going ahead with its plan of inducting five fully-owned aircrafts. The company’s average fleet age will come down to three years with this move.
In terms of passenger growth, the company conceded that despite directional imbalance in traffic, the trend is getting more evened out with the emergence of metro-to-metro demand.
Not responding to speculation but affirming passengers' belief in the brand, Sunil Bhaskaran, CEO and MD, AirAsia India, told IANS: "So far as the air traffic is concerned, it has been highly directional between metro and non-metro cities, though we are now beginning to see the metro-metro traffic coming back."
Further, the crowd of travelers is getting younger, "Passenger
demographics have changed significantly with the proportion of under 29- year-olds
increasing to nearly half of the total passengers and those over 40 reduced to
less than half of passengers."
"As young India starts resuming work and planning holidays this festive season, we expect this number to further increase."
However, Bhaskaran pointed out that despite encouraging traffic growth which has been witnessed over the last few weeks, "the harsh reality is that the traffic is still only 35 per cent of the pre-Covid levels on a year-on-year basis and we have a long way to go".
"We anticipate the road to recovery to be gradual and steady; we are cautiously optimistic about the festive season that is coming up," he said.
"We are already operating more than 100 daily flights now, which is between 45-50 per cent of our pre-Covid capacity now, and expect a steady rise as we near the festive period."
He elaborated that although uncertainty continues to impact the demand, there is a sizable domestic market dependent on leisure travel that will hopefully open up later this year.
Besides, Bhaskaran said that pent-up demand is now converting into a more sustained trend.
"The recent surge in traffic over the long October 2 weekend was an encouraging sign for demand for domestic holidays," he said
"We are hopeful of continued growth in demand as we
enter the festive season."
The company claimed that before the pandemic COVD-19, the company was showing healthy growth. "We had nearly doubled our operations between 2018 and 2020 and chalked out plans to continue growing at more than 30 per cent year-on-year before the pandemic," he said.
"Before the onset of pandemic, we had already firmed up orders to take delivery of 5 Airbus A320 Neo aircraft with CFM engines and we would be honouring the same in the next few months."
Walking the talk for his company, the company has opened new routes keeping in view the demand for the direct connections the customers are demanding. These routes include Mumbai-Bhubaneswar, Mumbai-Guwahat, and Mumbai-Ranchi.
The resilience presented by the company is a healthy sign that
the Indian economy’s worst may be getting over.