Southern regional carrier Air Pegasus has cancelled flights indefinitely, saddled by financial problems, said three people in the know.
Air Pegasus operates out of Bangalore airport, to regional airports such as Hubli. An airport executive said the airline cancelled its two flights in the morning, ‘due to some technical glitch’. The airport website showed all flights for today have been cancelled.
Air Pegasus is controlled by Shyson Thomas, a veteran ground handling operator whose company Decor Aviation which provides services across 11 major airports in India.Air Pegasus started operations last April, after getting the operators permit from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on March 24. Thomas was unavailable for comment immediately.
Sources said Thomas had been desperately looking to raise money for his airline even reaching out to foreign carriers, private equity investors and even his old customers.
ET had on October 12 reported on the growing cash problems facing new airlines such as Bengaluru’s FlyEasy and Chennai’s Premier Airways which are yet to start. Vijaywada-based Air Costa consistently lists the highest number of monthly flight cancellations on the DGCA website.
In the last decade, the industry saw the demise of Kingfisher Airlines as well as smaller ones such as MDLR Airlines, Air Mantra, Deccan 360 (started by Air Deccan founder GR Gopinath) and Paramount Airways among others.
Apart from Premier several others such as Zav Airways, Air Carnival, Air One, Zexus Air, and Turbo Megha are waiting in the wings to start flying.
