He further said the “obscene hurry” to grant the licence before a new government came into being suggested corruption. AirAsia India plans to have a 10-aircraft fleet within a year of start of its operations and these planes would be drawn from A-320 family of aircraft ordered by the AirAsia Group.
On March 22, AirAsia India received its first A-320 aircraft configured in an all-economy layout with 180 seats. The airline would initially focus on connecting non-metro towns and replicate its low-cost, no-frills model that has seen considerable success in Southeast Asia. The USD 30 million venture was the first airline to be launched after the FDI norms in aviation were amended in September 2012.
While AirAsia owns 49 per cent stake in the Indian carrier, Tata Sons has 30 per cent and Telstra Tradeplace holding the remaining.
The final clearance by the DGCA came after it disposed of about 20 objections from various parties, including Federation of Indian Airlines, Subramanian Swamy and others. Most of them had argued that FDI by foreign airlines had been allowed into existing Indian arilines, not for creating joint venture start-ups.
They had also claimed that the new airline would disrupt industry equilibrium. The Foreign Investment Promotion Board had given its approval for AirAsia's investment in April, following which the Civil Aviation Ministry gave a ‘no-objection certificate' in September 2013.
The airline has appointed a Tata Sons veteran S Ramadorai as its Chairman.
The other Board members of the Mumbai-registered company are Fernandes, R Venkatraman, a former executive assistant to former Tata Sons chairman Ratan Tata, Bharat Vasani, the chief legal counsel of the Tata group, and Telstra's Arun Bhatia.
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