Corporate air travel takes off once again

Mumbai: As global economy improves, corporate business air travel too has followed suit with the industry seeing a sharp rise in the past few weeks.
Travel agents and travel portal executives say corporate bulk bookings have resumed, reflecting a recovery pattern in the corporate travel segment. Corporate sector air travel, which typically accounts for nearly half the airlines’ capacity consumption, had shrunk sharply due to cost cutting last year.
“We have seen a 40% increase in bulk air tickets bookings from various corporate clients, including Blue Star, since last eight weeks,” said travel portal Cleartrip sales vice-president Naveen Gulrajani.
During the recession, corporates embarked on a cost-cutting drive and business travel was the first to be struck off the list.
“The recovery has seen more travellers and is expected to grow further in the coming months,” said Ashwini Kakkar, executive vice chairman of Mercury Travels.
Travel agents say apart from the leisure sector, business travel is back on track as corporates have started hiring people and stalled expansion plans have been revived.
Load factors had dipped to less than 50% during the downturn, but now airlines will push up ticket prices amid strong demand from corporates helping the industry to recover from one of its worst downturns, said a sectoral analyst.Travel Agents Federation of India general secretary Ajay Prakash says prices are unlikely to hit rock bottom again. Airlines will introduce more variety in the price ranges in 2010, he added. IATA director general Giovanni Bisignani says demand continues to improve, but we still have a lot of ground to recover.
01/01/10 Mithun Roy/Economic Times

Dubai fest adds wings to air bookings

Mumbai: Indian carriers flying to the Gulf destinations, especially Dubai have a reason to rejoice. With ‘Dubai Shopping Festival’ set to kick start on January 28, airlines such as Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and national carrier Air India and also the Gulf-based carriers are already witnessing a surge of nearly 50% in seat bookings compared to last year.
Yatra.com vice-president (international holidays) Ashish Kapoor said said the fares of Jet Airways, Air India and Kingfisher’s are in the range of Rs 17,000-18,000. Low cost carriers like Air Arabia are offering fares at Rs 15,000- all inclusive.Meanwhile, several Gulf-based carriers are offering a three-night-four-day package at Rs 22,000 inclusive of visa cost.
Jet Airways is offering packages in the price range of Rs 15,000 and Rs 18,550 which includes return fare in economy class, airport transfers, accommodation with breakfast and city tour options etc. The carrier is also offering 10 kg excess baggage waiver with every package for the Dubai shopping festival.
The Gulf region contributes nearly Rs 2,500 crore to Air India’s kitty annually, which is approximately 30% of the carrier’s revenues from international operations. The anticipated loads on each flight could be over 90%, according to travel portals who are franchisees for airlines.
01/01/10 Shaheen Mansuri/Financial Express

‘It’s India’s decade in aviation’

Bengaluru: India’s capability of building state -of- the art fighter planes and rockets would be put to test in the New Year.Scientists are confident of propelling the country’s aerospace industry into a new orbit in the coming decade.
Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) will hurl a rocket with an indigenous cryogenic engine that can put communication satellites of four tonnes and above into orbit.
The satellite- GSAT-4 itself would test new technologies that India plans in its space programme in the coming decades.Around the same time, Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd, the sole defence aircraft maker based in Bengaluru , will fly for the first time the Light Combat Helicopter.
The new chopper, which will be an armed version of HAL’s flagship advanced light helicopter Dhruv, would be flown for atleast 500 hours before it is certified.
While the chopper will take wings, Tejas, the light combat aircraft will attempt to complete its first phase of flight trials to get the initial operational clearance that would pave way for the induction into the Indian air force.
The Indo-Russian fifth generation fighter aircraft or FGFA will also make its first flight during the year.
ISRO will also partner HAL in the country’s Rs2,500 crore passenger plane project. The regional transport aircraft, or RTA-70, being designed to carry 70-90 passengers on short-haul routes, is part of an ambitious programme to build civilian planes and bridge the gap in aeronautical expertise with countries like China and Brazil.
31/12/09 Sakaal Times

Oil firms cut jet fuel price by 1.6 pc

New Delhi: Reducing jet fuel prices for the third consecutive fortnight, state-run oil companies today cut rates by 1.6 per cent, a move that will ease burden on cash-strapped airlines.
Aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices in Delhi was reduced by Rs 636 a kilolitre to Rs 38,697 per kilolitre, effective midnight tonight, an official of Indian Oil Corp, the nation's largest oil firm, said.
With the latest cut, jet fuel rates have come down from Rs 40,422.62 per kl in November and are now at the levels prevalent in August.
31/12/09 Press Trust of India

AI to build cargo hub in Kerala

Air India (AI) will build a cargo hub in Kerala as part of increasing its freight movements from the country.
The hub would be developed either in Thiruvananthapuram or Kozhikode, said K.M. Unni, Air India (AI) Board member and head of the airline’s engineering department, at Calicut International Airport, Karipur, on Thursday.
Mr. Unni said the cargo hub would go a long way in enhancing the carrier’s freight movement from the State.
01/01/10 The Hindu

Future tense for airport ground handlers

Mumbai: Thousands of loaders, baggage handlers and ramp operators working with the 50-odd ground handling agencies at the Mumbai airport are not sure whether they would be able to report to work on the first day of the new year.
Reason: Their airport entry passes will expire at midnight and chances of getting them renewed by Thursday seemed slim.
Two years ago, the BCAS and DGCA had issued a circular outlining a new ground- handling policy. Under this, airport operators of six metro airports were to award contracts to three ground handling agencies (including foreign firms) and airlines were supposed to choose any of them for their ground-handling jobs. Currently, many airlines do their own ground handling and apart from that, there are multiple agencies, with Mumbai airport having about 50 ground-handlers.
The new policy was to come into effect from January 1, 2010, and so the airport entry passes issued to thousands of employees of the ground-handling agencies in Mumbai airport were to expire at midnight. The new policy, which means job losses for many, is being opposed tooth and nail by employees of Air India, ground handlers and staff of at least two dozen foreign airlines.
01/01/10 Times of India

Air India's plan to cut wages, flights may run into rough weather

New Delhi, Mumbai: Air India's plans of reducing salaries of employees could run into rough weather, with sections of the employees opposing the move.
Sources told Business Line that the airline may reduce salaries by 10-15 per cent in the New Year. Earlier this year, the airline board had recommended a 50-per cent cut in wages. The proposal, however, could not be implemented due to protests from different sections of the airline. The current employee base stands at 31,500.
Apart from salary cuts, Air India is also looking at curtailing flights on some of the loss-making routes so as to reduce its losses which had doubled to Rs 5,548 crore in 2008-09.
A clearer picture on the wage and route cuts is likely to emerge after the conclusion of the Airline board meeting scheduled to be held in Mumbai on January 8 and 9. “Attempts will be made to ensure that there is parity in wages of the employees of the erstwhile Air India and Indian before any decision is taken on reducing the wages,” sources said.
The President of the Air Corporation Employees Union, Mr Dinakar Shetty, said that any wage cut was unacceptable.
There are other sections of employees in the airline who are open to the idea of a 10-15 per cent reduction, but have put the rider that the carrier should present a firm turnaround proposal before they accept any pay cuts.
31/12/09 Ashwini Phadnis/Shubhra Tandon/Business Line

AAI expects user fees to up its annual earnings by Rs 100 cr

The Airports Authority of India (AAI) expects its annual earnings to grow by Rs 100 crore once it receives approval from the Ministry of Civil Aviation to charge user development fee (UDF) at nine airports. “We will annually earn around Rs 100 crore by charging UDF at eight of our airports. We have sent our request and will start charging as soon as we receive the approval,” said a senior AAI official who did not wish to be named.
UDF is levied on passengers to recover the money invested on building the airport.
In a first, the airports authority is to start charging UDF of Rs 1,000 on each international and Rs 150 on each domestic passenger at the Jaipur airport from January 1.
For the remaining eight airports — Udaipur, Amritsar, Mangalore, Varanasi, Vishakhapatnam, Trichy, Ahmedabad and Thiruvananthapuram, the authority proposes to charge Rs 250 on each domestic and Rs 900 for each international passenger.
AAI invested Rs 2,547.57 crore on modernising airport terminals, passenger facilities and air traffic and navigational aids during 2008-09, which is the highest capital expenditure incurred so far by the authority. It earned a profit of Rs 687.21 crore on revenue of Rs 4,185.95 crore during the same period.
Any proposal to charge UDF at airports with passenger numbers of over 1.2 million goes to the Airport Economic Regulatory Authority and below that comes to the ministry.
01/01/10 Mihir Mishra/Business Standard

Disruption of services at Kozhikode caused by foreign pilots celebrating vacation: AI

Malappuram: Air India (AI) will phase out all its foreign pilots within a year. The failure of several foreign pilots who went on Christmas vacation to resume duty on time had disrupted Air India’s services from Calicut International Airport over the weekend. Air India Express Chief Operating Officer Ansbert D’Souza and Air India Engineering Director and Board member K.M. Unni told newspersons at the Calicut International Airport, Karipur, on Thursday that the action of foreign pilots had inconvenienced the airline and the passengers.
Mr. Unni said all foreign commanders of Air India would be replaced by Indian pilots within a year. He said Air India Express services from Karipur were crippled as most of the pilots were foreigners, who went on leave during Christmas. Air India could not substitute them as flying to Karipur, which is a critical airport with a tabletop runway walled by several hills, required special licence from the Director General of Civil Aviation.
01/01/10 The Hindu

State body to redo pilots’ schedule for flight safety

Mumbai: In a crucial move to improve flight safety, a government committee reworking work schedules of pilots on Wednesday accepted a proposal demanding alteration in flying hours.
The proposal was submitted to the committee headed by Nasim Zaidi, chief of the directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA).
Four pilot groups — The Indian Pilots Guild, Indian Commercial Pilot Association, Society for Welfare of Pilots (a Jet Airways’ pilot body) and Federation of Indian Pilots representing pilots across other airlines — put forththe proposal to the committee last month.
The committee will include some of suggestions made in proposal in its report to the government, said Captain Tauseef Mukadam, general secretary of the Indian Pilots’ Guild, a union formed by Air India pilots.
One of the key suggestions in the proposal is to regulate and determine flying hours for pilots, depending on the time of flight departures.
For instance, a pilot taking off during the night or early morning should have a nine-hour duty. However, if a pilot is flying during the daytime, he can fly up to 13 hours.
The aim of the suggestions is to minimise pilot error due to fatigue.
31/12/09 Sarthak Gupta/TopNews.in

Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authorit eyes airport land

Mumbai: With its own land bank exhausting, the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) is trying to acquire as much land as possible for the city’s infrastructure development. As a part of this drive, the authority now has its eyes firmly set on the airport land.
The MMRDA, which has been appointed the Special Planning Authority (SPA) for the airport land, has called for suggestions and objections from people for developing the land in the near future.
The domestic and international airports, together, are spread across 2,290.69 acres. Out of this, 308.84 acres has been encroached by slums. With just 276 acres officially declared as land for slums, the Mumbai International Airport Ltd (Mial) — a joint consortium of Airport Authority of India (AAI) and JVK — has already started the rehabilitation of slums with the help from Housing Development and Infrastructure Ltd (HDIL).
The state government has appointed MMRDA as the nodal agency to carry out the rehabilitation process, and the the authority plans to utilise this land for development purposes once the rehabilitation is complete.
01/01/10 Ninad Siddhaye/Daily News & Analysis

Govt pressurised negotiators to end hijacking by Dec 31: Doval

New Delhi: Pressure from the government and hysteria back home by relatives of passengers prevented negotiators to force the hijackers of an Indian Airlines plane to scale down their demand to release just one terrorist, says A K Doval, India's Chief negotiator.
Ten years after the traumatic passengers were released after a costly exchange of three dreaded terrorists on New Year eve, Doval, a former IB chief, says demands may have been reduced to release of just one terrorist if negotiators had got some more time.
Pressure was building from the government to quickly secure the release of passengers and finish the task before the clock struck midnight heralding the new millennium, he said.
"That was something that was adding pressure on us ki ab app key paas 12 ghante bache hain (you have 12 hours left)... the pressure was from the people. The pressure from the people was on the government, the pressure from the government would be transmitted to the negotiators and they were telling the people are getting restless," 64-year-old Doval told a news agency here.
The intelligence agencies negotiated with the terrorists for seven days under tremendous domestic pressure to secure the release of passengers.
The hijack crisis ended after three dreaded terrorists --Maulana Masood Azhar, who later founded Jaish-e-Mohammed, Mushtaq Ahmed Zargar and Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh--were released in exchange for the lives of 149 passengers and a 15-member crew of the plane.
01/01/10 Zee News

JetLite defers delivery of 9 aircraft

New Delhi: Jet Airways' low-cost arm JetLite has deferred deliveries for nine aircraft by nearly three years as part of its capacity rationalisation plans.
The delivery of nine Boeing 737-800s were scheduled between 2010 and 2012. These would now come in between 2012 and 2015.
"Apropos the JetLite deliveries, we have nine Boeing 737 -800s on order. These are due to be delivered between January 2012 and July 2015. These aircraft were originally slated for delivery between July 2010 and September 2012," a Jet Airways spokesperson said.
Earlier, the company had planned deferring only four Boeing jets, against the latest nine planes.
The four aircraft deferred then were rescheduled for deliveries in 2011, 2012 and 2013 but the delivery of the other five planes were kept unchanged, Datta had said.
31/12/09 Indian Express

Cure for Maharaja’s ailment lies in the private sector

New Delhi: It is simple mathematics. Over Rs 7,200 crore losses, a Rs 45,000 crore bill to acquire new aircraft, equity as low as Rs 145 crore and over 30,000 irate employees ready to bring its operations to a grind if there is a salary cut. All this adds up to deep trouble for Air India.
Is there any hope of a turn around? The government has been in the midst of trying out several options to infuse cash into the resource-starved company piling up losses. At least for now, it has not weighed the option of privatising the national carrier. What if the company is returned to its parents? Will the Maharaja regain its pride of place amongst air travellers as the Tatas’ flagship brand?
“There needs to be an airline that is not just for profit maximisation. It needs to address issues like better connectivity in north-eastern states or attending to causes like Air India took upon itself,” former aviation secretary Ajay Prasad told Financial Chronicle.
Ironically, for employees, their chairman and managing director Arvind Jadhav and ‘babus’ in Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan running the airline from the backdoor are villains of the peace. They detest Jadhav for proposing a wage cut to pull the airline out of the red. They blame the bureaucracy for all ills bogging the airline.
31/12/09 Parul Chhaparia/mydigitalfc.com

'Don't check-in passengers with stapled Chinese visa'

New Delhi: The Directorate General of Civil Aviation has instructed all airlines not to check-in any passenger who has a Chinese visa stapled on his or her passport.
The DGCA instruction comes weeks after India declared as "invalid" the standalone paper visas given by the Chinese embassy here and consulates in Mumbai and Kolkata to Indians from Jammu and Kashmir and Arunachal Pradesh. A travel advisory issued by the External Affairs Ministry last month asked those going to China to ensure that their visas are pasted on their passports.
31/12/09 Press Trust of India

South African girl held with heroin in Mumbai

Mumbai: The Air Intelligence Unit (AIU) of Customs at the Mumbai International airport arrested a 21-year-old South African girl for trying to smuggle around 1.6 kg of heroin in her luggage.
AIU officials had received a tip-off that a traveller was trying to smuggle drugs in a flight going to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.
The accused, identified as Thulile Goodness Dhlamini, was going to board an Ethiopian Airlines flight on Wednesday. When AIU officials checked her baggage, they found heroin worth about Rs1.6 crore concealed in a cavity created in her suitcase.
Dhlamini revealed that she came to India 15 days ago and then went to Delhi where some unidentified people gave her the contraband drug on Tuesday. After that, she left for Mumbai on the same day to leave for Addis Ababa. She revealed that from Addis Ababa, she was going to Harare where she had to deliver the drug to another person.
31/12/09 Divyesh Singh/Daily News & Analysis

What Ahmedabad airport needs

Ahmedabad: Sardar Vallabbhai International Airport is infamous for bird hits. But the airport authorities, along with the civic body, has taken initiatives to keep its periphery clean to keep birds at bay.
The airport’s boundary wall is intact now. It’s helping officials to maintain cleanliness near it. Expect fewer bird hits next year.
Another drawback of Sardar Vallabbhai International Airport is its poor connectivity to the city. There is a pre-paid taxi booth. Flyers can also opt for autorickshaws. But most of the auto-drivers cheat newcomers to the city. The administration should tighten noose around them.
It can also spare a thought to introducing public transit system from the airport. A regular bus service would be more than welcome. Frequent flyers and those travelling light will love it for sure.
Finally, punctuality. The New Year promises more flights landing in the city. The airport authorities should make adequate arrangements to ensure flights are not delayed due to heavy traffic.
Amdavadis were promised access to the new domestic terminal at Sardar Vallabbhai Patel airport in the first quarter of 2010. Inspired by Singapore’s Changi Airport, the authorities had set aside Rs 290 crore for Ahmedabad airport. March is the deadline. International terminal’s new locale of all goes well, the international terminal will be shifted to the existing domestic terminal before April.
01/01/10 Ahmedabad Mirror