March 4, 2013, 5:04 a.m. ET
By GAURAV RAGHUVANSHI
The Wall Street Journal
AirAsia
Bhd. is moving ahead with plans to set up an Indian budget airline with
interviews planned this week to recruit senior staff and pilots.
AirAsia,
which last month announced the joint venture with the Tata Group, aims
to name its chief executive for the new company soon and will conduct
interviews for senior pilots in Mumbai later in the week, according to
people familiar with the situation.
AirAsia will need senior
pilots on board early on to help with the airline's certification and
approval process with India's Directorate General of Civil Aviation. But
before that, AirAsia first needs to receive approval from the Foreign
Investment Promotion Board for the proposed tie-up.
Sepang, Malaysia based AirAsia didn't immediately respond to requests for comment on Monday.
AirAsia
and Tata are aiming to crack India's difficult aviation market where
excessive government regulation and jet fuel prices that are among the
highest in the world have stifled the industry. AirAsia will own a 49%
stake in AirAsia India, while Tata Sons, the Indian salt-to-software
conglomerate, will own 30% in the venture. Arun Bhatia of Telstra
Tradeplace Pvt. Ltd. will own the remaining 21%.
Among the pilots
being approached by AirAsia include several Kingfisher Airlines Ltd.
captains, according to the people familiar with the situation. As many
as 30 Kingfisher captains are in the job market after their airline was
grounded in October as the carrier, owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya,
failed to keep flights going because of mounting debt.
AirAsia,
which will operate Airbus A320 aircraft in India, can employ many of
these pilots with little retraining needed as they operated the same
aircraft type while at Kingfisher.
Source: http://online.wsj.com
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