AirAsia India, which is believed to be facing a shortage of Senior Flight Attendants, has modified its schedule and pattern to address two problems: shortage of crew, and a poorly performing route.

The airline has cancelled its Bangalore – Chennai return early morning for a long time now. The airline previously had two distinct aircraft patterns – ten short sectors (Goa, Kochi, Chennai) on one, and two long and one short on the other (Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur). The new, effective pattern does not fly the early morning Chennai and return, while advancing the 15:10 Goa flight to 13:15. The 18:35 BLR-MAA flight has been moved to 16:30, with a corresponding change to the return flight. The late night Bangalore-Kochi flight has been pushed to a departure 25 minutes later.

As a result of these changes, the airline presently operates just 14 daily flights as against its usual 16. Aircraft utilisation has gone up on the first pattern from 10:15hrs to 13:35 thanks to the Jaipur flight, while the second pattern’s utilisation has dropped to 7:35 in considering the early morning Chennai cancellation. The yellow highlighted cells belong to flights that were moved from one pattern to the other.

Most of the re-scheduling may have been done to better match the cabin crew’s flight duty time limitation (FDTL). As a result, the airline’s schedules had become fairly chaotic in November, with a significant number of cancellations and delays.

This month, two Airbus A320s are expected to join AirAsia India’s fleet from parent group AirAsia. The airline will fly to Pune from Bangalore and Jaipur from Pune effective 17th Decmeber, for which the aircraft are expected on Indian soil between the 10th and 15th of December. To cater to the new routes without disturbing the present schedule, just one additional aircraft is required in the airline’s fleet.

The airline was affected by the DGCA’s directive barring management pilots from assuming training positions. One of the airline’s captains, who reportedly has tendered his resignation but is serving his notice period, has been recognized by the DGCA as a Type rating Instructor (TRE). The airline also has a foreign captain from the AirAsia group serving as a training pilot.

Meanwhile, Subramanian Swamy had last evening tweeted about a Delhi High Court Hearing today, concerning both AirAsia India and what he may have meant as Vistara.