airline | Yuva Sai Sagar

Air India plans to neutralize carbon emission footprint by 2020

Harpreet Singh, executive director, flight safety of Air India, while talking about the airline’s environment conservation programme said, the initiative has been taken positively by the AAI. ”

The national carrier Air India has asked the Airport Authority of India (AAI), which manages air traffic in India to allow it’s aircraft to land with ‘constant descent approach’ at the runway, to let it save on fuel, which forms about 40 per cent of the airline’s operating cost. At present, due to safety and global aviation regulatory compliance reasons, the aircraft descent is not in straight slant. Instead, during the descending process, the aircraft brings down its altitude by taking a small dip before flying straight for a while. The process continues in small cycles till the final landing is done on the runway.<!– Dna_Article_Middle_300x250_BTF –>Harpreet Singh, executive director, flight safety of Air India, while talking about the airline’s environment conservation programme said, the initiative has been taken positively by the AAI. “If the idea gets implemented without compromising on any safety issues, then it will help us in saving lot of fuel, thereby helping us save not only on carbon footprint but also save crucial foreign exchange,” Singh added.According to the airline officials, such landing can be made possible only on certain airports, especially during the non-peak hours, when the air traffic is low around at the airport. The airline officials also added that the consequence of low fuel may lead to lowering of air fares for the passengers. The AAI officials were not available for their comment on the issue.Speaking further on the airline’s initiative on fuel saving, Singh said that the airline’s pilots are being trained to be more persistent in asking for higher altitude while flying as it helps in saving fuel. “There is no harm in asking for it from the ATC. If there is any possibility, the ATC personnel may allow it,” she said.As per the data available with the airline, so far in the last one year ending March, 2015; the airline has saved around 225 mn kg of carbon emission footprint. With reduction of seven percent in carbon emission in over past five years, and further around two percent reduction in coming two years, Air India plans to turn carbon emission neutral by the year 2020.

November 27, 2015

Dear IndiGo, please stop acting like a Khap Panchayat

IndiGo faced some backlash after they ejected a passenger for wearing a short dress.

On Monday, there was slight outrage when news emerged that an IndiGo flight from Mumbai to Delhi didn’t allow a passenger to board a flight because she wasn’t ‘appropriately dressed’. The lady in question was wearing a short-dress and was deemed ‘not appropriately dressed by staff members of IndiGo’.I say ‘slight outrage’ because, had the incident involved a governing politician or a Khap Panchayat, a couple of awards probably would’ve been returned in protest of the rise in intolerance. According to co-passengers, the woman was allowed to get on a later flight when she changed into trousers.<!– Dna_Article_Middle_300x250_BTF –>According to a report in Indian Express, the airline doesn’t really have a problem with short dresses, but they have an archaic rule which claims that ‘employees and their family members’ who travel using the ‘staff leisure travel privileges’ have to adhere to a ‘specific dress code’.The woman in question is a former IndiGo employee, while her brother is a current employee at the airline. The lady in question was wearing a frock which ended above her knee and no one raised any questions in Doha airport in Qatar, an Islamic nation where progressiveness is allegedly in short supply. IndiGo staffers even threatened Devyadutt Sahu, another passenger who took up the woman’s case and allegedly told him he’d be ejected too if he doesn’t remain mum. Whatever, excuses the IndiGo management come up with, there’s no denying that the move is extremely regressive. For starters, the IndiGo professional dress code could also be described to be ‘not appropriate’ given that air hostesses often wear knee-length skirts. The question really isn’t about a dress code. We all know there are events which require formal attire, but a plane is not one of them. For example, would IndiGo have ejected a male passenger for wearing shorts? It seems highly unlikely.The real problem starts when a dress code or uniform is used to control women’s behaviour, like a Khap which demands bans on mobiles or jeans for women, but never for men. And that’s why IndiGo’s Khap-like behaviour is disturbing. In a reply by e-mail to Indian Express, that IndiGo does have a specific dress code, as and when they fly with the airline under the staff leisure travel privileges. The email also said: “This matter will be thoroughly investigated and the staff will be further sensitised via focused learning workshops.”Perhaps, IndiGo should put, ‘Stop behaving like regressive Khaps who try to control women through their clothing” on that list.

October 29, 2015

Air India rejigs its domestic flight operations for winter schedule

According to the release, the Delhi-Mumbai-Coimbatore flight will now be operated as two separate flights on the Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Coimbatore sectors. Similarly, the Mumbai-Chandigarh flight will now operate as Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Chandigarh flights.
File Photo
dna Research & Archives
National carrier Air India (AI) has rejigged its domestic flight operations for the winter schedule, that comes into effect this Saturday, and has also increased the frequency of its service to London’s Heathrow airport during the period. As part of the winter schedule, the airline has also added capacity on certain routes by replacing Airbus A319s with A320s, among others.AI will operate a third daily flight on the Delhi-London route from November 1, it said in a release in New Delhi. It already operates two services per day on this route. The state run-carriers fly daily to London from Mumbai as well.<!– Dna_Article_Middle_300x250_BTF –>AI has already announced the launch of a non-stop flight to San Francisco from December 2 as part of a move to expand international operations during winter. The airline currently flies to and from New York, Chicago and Newark in the US. Also, as part of the winter operations, it has restructured its 13 domestic transit flights and will now operate these flights without a stopover, it said.According to the release, the Delhi-Mumbai-Coimbatore flight will now be operated as two separate flights on the Delhi-Mumbai and Mumbai-Coimbatore sectors. Similarly, the Mumbai-Chandigarh flight will now operate as Mumbai-Delhi and Delhi-Chandigarh flights.The airline said it has also changed the aircraft type from A319 to A320 on 18 sectors, while replacing A320 with A321 on six sectors and A319 with A321 on two sectors, thereby offering more capacity in these sectors.To improve regional connectivity, AI will also commence flight services between Mumbai and Diu, which would be operated by its regional arm, Alliance Air, from October 26, it said, adding that the decision comes after the Union Territory administration evinced an interest in the airline’s proposal. Alliance would operate a 72-seater ATR 72-600 on the said route, it said. AI had approached various state governments and UTs to operate flights to tier-II and tier-III cities under Viable Gap Funding (VGF). Other state governments have also shown interest and are in the process of finalising the terms of operations under the VGF route, the release said.Meanwhile, AI also announced an extension of its “free ticket” offer, rolled out earlier for premium class passengers, to economy class fliers as well. AI’s economy class travellers also can avail the offers under the eSuperSaver scheme from next month.The government-owned airline had in August last year announced a promotional single-user scheme for business class flyers on its select domestic sectors. The scheme is valid till March next year.

October 19, 2015

Air India’s Dreamliner planes fail to come true

“The association requests the management to put on hold further deliveries of B787s till all technical problems are resolved to the satisfaction of Air India.” The Air India Aircraft Engineers Association said.

Air India has put the delivery of Dreamliner planes on hold due to problems
File Photo

Facing frequent problems with the Boeing Dreamliner planes, the engineers of national carrier Air India have urged the management to not accept any further delivery till the pending issues are resolved. The airline is awaiting six more Dreamliners of the total 27 ordered.Reportedly, AI is losing money by the day as many planes remain grounded due to snags. The Air India Aircraft Engineers Association recently stated, “The association requests the management to put on hold further deliveries of B787s till all technical problems are resolved to the satisfaction of Air India.”<!– Dna_Article_Middle_300x250_BTF –>An internal route economic analysis done by AI in April showed that in the last financial year, the airline lost over Rs 1,800 crore on all international routes on which the state-of-the-art Boeing Dreamliners were operating. It was nearly half of the total loss (Rs 3,900 crore) incurred by the carrier on international routes during the period. The losses are worrying, as the Dreamliner was an important part of AI’s turn-around plan.The carrier is reeling under a debt of over Rs 44,000 crore and is dependent upon the state grant for funds. Sources said the Dreamliners were ordered because the manufacturer had claimed that they were 20 per cent more fuel efficient. Fuel expenditure amounts to over 40% of the airline’s operational cost.During an interview with dna last month, Dinesh Keskar, senior VP (Asia Pacific and India sales) for Boeing Commercial airplanes, had said that despite some initial snags, the airline management was satisfied with the Dreamliner’s performance. “In fact, I had a meeting with former AI CMD Rohit Nandan a few days ago, and he admitted to me that Dreamliner was now the backbone of their airline’s turn-around plan.”

September 21, 2015

Indian students carry homemade food while travelling abroad: Survey

From desi ghee to ladoos to pickles, Indian students prefer to pack home made food items when they travel abroad for studies, says a survey.

Image for representational purposes only.

From desi ghee to ladoos to pickles, Indian students prefer to pack home made food items when they travel abroad for studies, says a survey.The survey, done by the airline Virgin Atlantic, found that ‘ghar ka khana’ (home made) such as ladoos, pickles, desi ghee and spices were among the most preferred items carried by students going to study overseas.”Food is an important item that students like to carry abroad. The most popular include mangoes, instant noodles and ready to eat food packs. Food apparatus like roti maker and other utensils are a must carry too,” it said. Other items that find their way into their luggages include bicycles, folding mattresses, dumbbells, selfie sticks, ayurvedic medicines and soft toys.<!– Dna_Article_Middle_300x250_BTF –>The findings are based on a survey of about 200 students who travelled in Virgin Atlantic for studying overseas, mostly in the US and the UK.

July 5, 2015

Rijiju row shows Air India’s schizophrenia: It doesn’t know who the real customer is

Air India is a schizophrenic airline. It does not know its genuine customers from its imagined ones.

Consider just two bits of recent evidence.

A few days back, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis was in the middle of a media storm when a member of his entourage – who had left his US entry visa at home – delayed the Air India flight on which they were to travel to the US on official work. As passengers who had already boarded fumed and fretted, Fadnavis’ aide coolly got his visa fetched from home before the aircraft took off.

Representational image. PTI

The airline was in the news again yesterday (1 July) when it apparently offloaded three bonafide passengers in order to accommodate the Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju, his assistant, and the J&K Deputy CM Nirmal Singh on the Leh-Delhi flight. Who cares who gets chucked out when ministers have to board?

Any airline which treats its regular customers in such a cavalier fashion is doomed to failure. The problem with Air India is that it has already failed commercially, thanks to political meddling, corruption, a bloated workforce, and recalcitrant unions who pushed it over the edge. It is on life support from the government, having been promised Rs 30,000 crore over 10 years.

This huge bailout explains why Air India treats its customers badly. The airline knows it is the government which keeps it in business and not passengers. The capital to keep the airline afloat comes from the taxpayer – and the ministers who manage money on her behalf. The money coming from passengers who pay for tickets is merely icing on the cake – not the cake itself.

The airline thus considers ministers and bureaucrats as it premium customers, and not fare-paying passengers. This is why it kowtows to politicians and not customers.

The only way to change this state of affairs is to privatise the airline (but who will buy a white elephant?) or let it go bust. Or do a bit of both: sell the salable parts and mothball the rest by giving staff a golden handshake.

Air India is not just a problem for its hapless customers, but for the survival of the industry itself, where only one airline currently makes serious money (IndiGo). In 2014-15, the airline is estimated to have lost Rs 5,500 crore, and the situation is unlikely to get any better even with lower fuel prices, for the competition remains strong.

As Firstpost wrote some time ago: “Air India is like a cancerous cell at the heart of Indian aviation that can infect everyone with its malignancy. The reason is simple: as long as the taxpayer keeps it afloat, no other airline can be viable. A loss-making airline industry is a serious threat to the lives and limbs of passengers as they may be short-changed on safety.”

“The truth is India’s aviation policies have been micro-managed to suit the current interests of various players at various points of time. The policies have not been thought out for the long term. If Jet (and Indian Airlines) didn’t want new entrants in the 1990s, then ownership guidelines were tweaked to keep the Tatas and SIA out. If more domestic airlines were keen to fly abroad, rules were introduced to make a minimum of five years’ domestic operation a prerequisite for flying abroad. To protect Air India, more rules were tinkered with.

“Such wayward policies ensured that only promoters who were thick with the ministry entered the picture, never mind their solvency or business credibility.”

Air India’s promoters are you and me, but the people who decide its survival are not you and me, but netas and babus in Delhi. That is why it sees them as prime customers. Ordinary passengers are just not that important in the airline’s scheme of things.

Time to shut it down and put everybody out of his or her misery.

July 2, 2015

Air India crew member detained in Jeddah on charges of smuggling gold

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June 5, 2015

Air India crew member detained in Jeddah airport on charges of smuggling out gold

June 5, 2015

Airline causes flight delay, then slaps cancellation fee on passenger who missed connecting flight

June 2, 2015

Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo operate additional flights to Nepal, take relief material free of cost

National carrier Air India and private carriers SpiceJet and IndiGo have not only resumed services to Nepal from Sunday but have also decided to operate additional flights and carry relief material to the quake-hit country free of cost.

“The regular scheduled operations from Delhi and Kolkata will also resume on Sunday,” Air India said in a statement. Besides, the airline would also operate two additional flights — one each from New Delhi and Kolkata — for Kathmandu with relief material and also to fly out those who are stuck due to the devastating earthquake, it said.

The additional flight from New Delhi to Kathmandu (AI-1215) will depart at 1030 hours while the second flight (AI-1247) would take off from Kolkata at 0700 hours, the airline said.

The state-run carrier operates three services to Kathmandu — two daily services from Delhi and one from Kolkata which is operated four times a week.

Air India. Reuters

Air India would also carry relief material free of charge on priority basis, on its flights to Kathmandu, both from Delhi and Kolkata, it said.

The decision to resume operations was taken following the re-opening of the runway of the Tribhuvan International Airport which was closed for few hours today due to the earthquake, it said.

The national airline has also waived off cancellation and refund charges for the bookings for Kathmandu and vice versa for travel up to May 2, the release said, adding the waiver will be for all connecting passengers to and from Kathmandu through Delhi and Kolkata also.

Budget carrier SpiceJet, which had cancelled both of its flight from Delhi for Kathmandu also said it plans to resume operations.

“SpiceJet plans to operate its scheduled flight for Kathmandu on Sunday,” the airline said in statement.
The airline said it was also looking into operating additional relief flights, if required. Accredited NGOs and relief organizations looking to transport emergency supplies, doctors are requested to contact airline by e-mail and SpiceJet would accommodate as many requests as possible free of charge, it said.

IndiGo too has resumed operations into Kathmandu and is on standby to carry relief material to the country free of charge.

A powerful 7.9 magnitude earthquake struck Nepal yesterday, causing massive damage in Kathmandu and surrounding areas with strong tremors being felt in neighbouring countries.

Following this, domestic airlines had put on hold their services to the Nepal capital Kathmandu.

With inputs from PTI

April 26, 2015

After Air India and Jet slash fares, budget carrier GoAir offers tickets at Rs 1,468

Link to original: After Air India and Jet slash fares, budget carrier GoAir offers tickets at Rs 1,468

January 19, 2015

Kalanithi Maran pumps Rs 875 crore from bleeding SpiceJet into his other firms

Kalanithi Maran

Even as the beleaguered SpiceJet piles on its dues and grounds its fleet forcing thousands of travellers to shell out exorbitant fares, the promoter of the airline, Kalanithi Maran, seems to have given his parent company Sun Group saccharine deals while on his way out.Documents accessed by dna show that even while SpiceJet’s finances were bleeding, the Kalanithi Maran-led airline was giving business worth several hundred crores to his parent company Sun Group.Maran’s deal-awarding frenzy to his own companies started in 2012, two years after he had taken over the profit making airline. In 2012, the airline had posted a loss of Rs 605 crore. In one of the many deals that year, SpiceJet gave a deal worth Rs 300 crore for three years to Sun Direct TV Private Ltd (Sun Direct), which controls 17% of India’s DTH service market. What was the Rs 300-cr contract for?According to the draft agreement, the Rs 300-crore contract was to place SpiceJet advertisements on Sun Direct platforms, provide discount coupons to each other’s customers and share resources with each other. In a year when SpiceJet made a massive loss of Rs 605 crore, it signed similar deals with other companies also owned by Maran.Was CEO Mills against all this?During the same board meeting in which SpiceJet’s CEO Neil Raymond Mills’ resignation was made public on August 3, 2013, SpiceJet also announced another string of deals with a host of other Maran-controlled companies. Mills was only half way in his tenure with 18 months still left in his contract. Mills quit despite the fact that his salary had been almost doubled during his stint with SpiceJet.What’s the company response?SpiceJet’s COO Sanjeev Kapoor or the airline’s company secretary Chandan Sand failed to answer dna’s specific queries on the deals with Maran’s own companies. Kapoor, however, sent the following response on email, “You might find it useful to study data points for other airlines as well to get an overall perspective rather than just launching what appears to be a motivated attack on one airline.”Did Maran gain more and lose little? The airline now has an accumulated loss of over Rs 3,000 crore, but has so far failed to submit a revival plan to the government. The grounding of its fleet has forced thousands of passengers to spend crores on bloated flight tickets. Maran has refused to scrape a fraction of his $2.3 billion net worth to bail out his bleeding airline. But if the deal book is anything to go by, Maran has more to gain by selling an airline he never could really run.Why the bleeding airlines was crazy about ads?All the firms to which the airlines’ money flowed to had Kalanithi Maran and his wife Kavery Kalanithi on the board of directors, as was in the case of SpiceJet. And all firms – Udaya FM, Kal Airways, Kal Communications, Kal Media Services and Sun Distribution Services – were to be paid by SpiceJet Rs 50 crore each for five years for one common service in particular – for placing the airline’s advertisements.What were Maran’s plans to tackle fund crunch?At the time the deals were announced, SpiceJet was desperately looking for funds infusion to tackle the looming crisis in its balance-sheets. There were reports that Maran was looking to offload his stake to a foreign airline. SpiceJet was also in talks with Singapore-based Tiger Air for a possible stake sale. Maran was keen to sell his stake. Reports suggest that by August 2014 he was already in talks with SpiceJet’s original founder Ajay Singh to sell out.SPICEJET DEALS WITH MARAN COMPANIES- Sun Direct: Rs 500 crore- Sun Business Solutions: Rs 75 crore- Kal Publications: Rs 50 crore- Udaya FM Private Ltd : Rs 50 crore- Kal Airways Private Ltd : Rs 50 crore- Kal Communications Private Ltd : Rs 50 crore- Kal Media Services Private Ltd : Rs 50 crore- Sun Distribution Services Pvt Ltd : Rs 50 croreTOTAL: Rs 875 crore

January 14, 2015

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