Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air first commercial flight flagged off by Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on this route

Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air's first commercial flight has been flagged off by Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Sunday. The first commercial flight of billionaire investors Rakesh Jhunjhunwala promoted Akasa Air is operating on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route.  

Besides, ace investor Rakesh Jhunjhunwala, it is also backed by aviation veterans Aditya Ghosh and Vinay Dube. Akas Air got its air operator certificate from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on July 7. 

HMCA Shri @JM_Scindia, HMoSCA Shri @Gen_VKSingh, Shri Rajiv Bansal, Secretary-MoCA, Smt. @ushapadhee1996, JS-MoCA, Smt. Neelu Khatri, Co-founder & Sr.VP corporate affairs, flagged off the first flight of @AkasaAir from @CSMIA_Official to @ahmairport.#AkasaAir pic.twitter.com/5XjPU4rBtZ

— MoCA_GoI (@MoCA_GoI) August 7, 2022

The airline's inaugural flight is scheduled to depart from Mumbai at 10.05 am and land in Ahmedabad at 11.25 am on Sunday. "The first flight of Akasa Air will be flagged off by Honourable Minister of Civil Aviation Shri Jyotiraditya Scindia," the Ministry of Civil Aviation had tweeted on Saturday.  

As per news agency PTI, Jhujhunwala, who was present at the Mumbai airport, said in his speech: "I must thank you (Scindia) because people say that India has a very very bad bureaucracy but the cooperation that the Ministry of Civil Aviation has given us, it is unbelievable." Nowhere in the world has an airline been conceived and born in 12 months, he added.

"Normally a child is born in 9 months, we took 12 months. It would not have been possible without the cooperation of the Ministry of Civil Aviation," he noted.

After virtually flagging off the flight, Scindia said this indeed is a "new dawn" for the civil aviation sector in India in more ways than one.

"The sector across the world has been through a very trying time through the last decade or two. Many black swan events have turned the fate of this industry globally," he said.

In India, this was a sector that once saw a plethora of new entrants, new entrepreneurs and new ideas. But over the past decade, it has witnessed a closure of many visionary airlines, he noted.

"Therefore, I say this is a new dawn in many ways for our sector in India," he said.
Scindia attributed the "democratisation" of the civil aviation sector in the country to the foresightedness and vision of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

"Earlier, this industry was considered for the elite. His dream, his vision -- that a person wearing slippers can also fly in a plane -- has led to a transformation of this sector in the last eight years in terms of affordability, accessibility and inclusion as we have never seen before," he noted.

"In this new environment, I would like to welcome Akasa Air," he said.

Along with the pillars of road and rail transport, the aviation sector will become the bulwark of transportation in India, he claimed.

Akasa Air will also start services on Bengaluru-Kochi, Bengaluru-Mumbai and Chennai-Mumbai routes from August 13, August 19 and September 15, respectively. 

With Inputs from PTI