Akasa Air to cancel 4 Mumbai-Bengaluru flights daily from Feb 15-Mar 30

Mumbai: Akasa Air on Tuesday said it will be cancelling four flights daily between the city and Bengaluru following government guidelines issued to reduce congestion at the Mumbai airport.

The civil aviation ministry has asked Mumbai airport operator MIAL to cut the number of scheduled flights and also restrict private jet operations for longer hours, according to reports.

In a statement, an Akasa Air spokesperson said it will be rationalising network with respect to flights operated from Mumbai.

"Flight operations of airlines to/from Mumbai are expected to be impacted with guidelines being implemented to reduce runway congestion at Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, Mumbai.

"... we have to rationalise our network resulting in cancellation of flights QP 1374 & QP 1367 (Mumbai to Bengaluru) and QP 1362 & QP 1366 (Bengaluru to Mumbai) between February 15 to March 30," the statement said.

The airline is communicating to the passengers about the flight cancellations and is giving them options to either rebook at no additional fee or process full refund.

Passengers can rebook on any date until April 15, as per the statement.

Akasa Air, which is facing a shortage of trained pilots, had cancelled 10 flights on February 11 and 12.

On Monday, the airline had termed the flight cancellations as an "aberration".

Sources, on Monday, had said that the airline was facing a shortage of trained pilots due to the non-availability of slots for simulator training.

The carrier has hired a good number of Airbus pilots from grounded carrier Go First, while it has Boeing aircraft fleet. A pilot has to undergo conversion training prior in case of switching from one type of aircraft to another type, the sources had said.

On Monday, Akasa Air CEO Vinay Dube the airline does not have a shortage of pilots. "Akasa Air is sufficiently staffed with over 600 pilots, enough to operate more than double the size of our current fleet".