Category Archives: Aviation

Qatar Tourism Authority (QTA) has announced the opening of a representative office in Mumbai. QTA’s representative office in India will oversee a wide range of promotional initiatives, including workshops, sales visits, travel agent destination training through QTA’s online Tawash programme, partnerships with tour operators, familiarisation trips, media campaigns and a variety of innovative activities to raise Qatar’s profile as a leisure and business tourism destination among Indian tourists. Rashed Saeed Al-Qurese, Chief Marketing and Promotion Officer, QTA commented, “The rapid growth of India’s outbound tourism market in recent years, coupled with QTA’s intensified efforts to diversify and grow visitor source markets, makes it the right time to establish our on-the-ground presence in India.” He added, “The steps taken to make accessing Qatar easier are particularly targeted at visitors who are seeking to experience our country’s luxury hospitality and unique cultural offerings, all while benefiting from the convenience of relatively short flights.” Qatar aims to have 5.6 million tourist visitors by 2023. Qatar recorded 1,56,726 Indian visitors from January to April this year, an increase of 15 per cent compared to last year. Qatar has become an increasingly accessible destination for Indian travellers, especially after Qatar waived entry visa requirements last year for 80 countries including India.

Continuing with its agenda to inspire the spirit of sportsmanship among the travel trade, Emirates Airlines will organise the third edition of its ‘Emirates Cricket Trade Tournament 2018’ for the travel trade in November in Mumbai. The League matches will be held on November 17-18, 2018 and the semi-final and final matches will be on November 24-25, 2018 at Islam Gymkhana. The cricket trophy was also unveiled in a pre-event networking event where it invited all the team members. Essa Sulaiman Ahmad, VP-India & Nepal, Emirates, was present at the networking party and wished the players all the best. The matches will be powered by DTCM, Amadeus and Reckon Travels & Holidays. The previous edition played in 2016 had 416 players in 32 teams playing 45 games over four days over two weekends.

Ariana Afghan Airlines, one of the largest airlines in Afghanistan, has recently commenced operations of its flight on the Herat-Delhi-Herat route. The Delhi-Herat flight will arrive in Delhi at 13:20 hours and depart Delhi at 14:30 hours. The airline flies once a week on Mondays. The first flight was inaugurated by Nader Omar, President, Ariana Afghan Airlines. The Delhi-Kandhar and Delhi-Kabul flights will arrive in Delhi at 13:05 hours and depart Delhi at 14:35 hours.

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the investments for expansion and upgradation of integrated terminals at Chennai, Guwahati and Lucknow airports by Airport Authority of India. Airports Authority of India has been assigned for the project with a total estimate of about Rs 5,000 crores to modernise, upgrade services, build new terminal buildings or upgrade the new terminals in Chennai, Lucknow and Guwahati. Jayant Sinha, Minister of Civil Aviation, made the announcement regarding the approval of the investment by Cabinet and assured that work for it would begin at the earliest.  

Ukraine International Airline (UIA) has started operating its first non-stop scheduled connection from Kiev to Delhi from May 1, 2018. The flights are being operated on Boeing 767, providing passengers with options of three class configuration. Currently UIA will operate its flights thrice a week and the fourth frequency will be added to the operations on June 7, 2018. Subhash Goyal, Chairman, STIC group, GSA for Ukraine International Airline, said, “This historic step will bridge the gap between the two nations and tourism sector will witness about 20-25 per cent growth by the end of 2019.”

Tajik Air, the national air carrier of Tajikistan, has recently commenced operations of its second flight on the Dushanbe-Delhi-Dushanbe route. The 2.15 hours long flight will arrive in Delhi at 13:30 hours and depart Delhi at 15:00 hours. The airline flies twice weekly on Tuesdays and Fridays.

The proposed international airport at Jewar in Greater Noida will not only bring places in Uttar Pradesh such as Kanpur and Allahabad closer to NCR under the regional connectivity scheme UDAN, it will also benefit locations in neighbouring states, a techno-economic feasibility report for the airport has stated. The Uttar Pradesh government is of the view that once the airport begins functioning from 2022-23, people travelling by air in the state will increase significantly. Air traffic in Uttar Pradesh is currently growing at a rate of 28.8 per cent. The PwC report stated that when the airport starts functioning, Shimla, Ludhinana, Pathankot, Gwalior and Adampur would be benefitted by it. These places, including Bhatinda would be benefitted by both the Jewar airport and the IGI airport in New Delhi under the Centres UDAN scheme. The capacity deployment to Kanpur and Adampur at present remains the highest. It said 88 per cent of Jewar airport traffic would be domestic and the rest international, adding that adjoining districts of Uttar Pradesh such as Agra and Gautam Budh Nagar would be the main contributors to the fliers volume to the airport. The report said the demand for air travel from the Dellhi-NCR region will increase manifold in the coming years and it will be determined by factors such as “natural growth in air travel demand due to economic progress and model shift from railways to air”. Source: PTI  

New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport has jumped six notches to break into the league of the top 20 busiest airports in the world for 2017 in terms of traffic volumes. The GMR-group-run New Delhi airport jumped from 22nd rank in 2016 to 16th rank, solidifying its status as one of the fastest growing airports in the world for passenger traffic, as per the Airports Council International (ACI). The ranking is based on the preliminary passenger traffic results for the most-travelled airports in 2017, released by ACI. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) was ranked the busiest airport in the world with 103 million passengers (both departing and arriving) despite a 0.3 per cent decline in traffic volumes over 2016. Delhi, the country’s busiest airport for passenger traffic, grew by 14.1 per cent year-over-year at 63.45 million, pushing it up from 22nd to the 16th busiest airport in the world,” the ACI said in the release. Even with this rapid growth in throughput, Delhi was also ranked first in Airport Service Quality for airports above 40 million passengers per annum along with the Mumbai airport, it said. Besides, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Bengaluru and Chennai were also ranked among the fastest growing airports in the world with an year-over-year growth of 26.9 per cent, 19.6 per cent, 12.9 per cent and 10.5 per cent, respectively during 2017, the ACI said. Source: PTI

The first phase of Oman’s brand new Muscat International Airport is operational now. It has increased the passenger capacity to 20 million, up from the previous 12 million passengers recorded in 2017. The state-of-the-art airport has been designed to be the shining symbol of the Sultanate of Oman. The new airport is designed as International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) category 4F airports which will be able to accommodate the world`s largest aircraft, Airbus A380 and the runway will enable independent parallel operations. The passenger terminals built with the latest technology are aligned with IATA Service Level A standards. The total gross area for the new Muscat International terminal building is 580,000 m2 with an overall airport land area of 21 km2. Salim Al-Mamari, Ministry of Tourism, Oman said, “The government of Oman is focusing on Travel and Tourism as a part of its economic diversification strategy. The newly opened Muscat International Airport, brand new Oman Convention and Exhibition Centre, revised visa rules along with other infrastructure developments seen in the recent times determine some of the efforts to increase tourism in Oman. India is one of the key markets for Oman and we are certain that this proactive initiative by the Ministry will drive a lot of visitors from India. Since 2014, Oman has witnessed over 23% growth in Indian arrivals. In 2016, Oman received 297,628 Indian arrivals as compared to 256,210 arrivals in 2014 that is over 16% growth within 2 years. In 2017, Oman received 321,161 Indian arrivals which is remarkably higher, showcasing growth of over 7.90 % in just one year.”

InterGlobe Aviation (IndiGo) has announced the appointment of Rahul Bhatia as its interim Chief Executive Officer who will continue as the director of the company. InterGlobe has also announced the appointment of Gregory Taylor as Senior Advisor to the company reporting directly to Bhatia. Aditya Ghosh will resign from the post of President of IndiGo effective July 31, 2018 and as a Director of the Company with effect from April 26, 2018. In the coming months, the Board will consider the appointment of Taylor as President and CEO of the Company, subject to receiving the necessary regulatory approvals and paperwork. Bhatia said, “We are delighted at Greg’s decision to rejoin the IndiGo team and welcome him back to the company. His enormous and varied experience and understanding of the complexities of the airline industry will be invaluable to our future plans. At the same time, we thank Aditya for all his hard work and contributions and for the successes that the company has enjoyed.” Ghosh, meanwhile, added, “For the last ten years, it has been a relentless, exhilarating and a most satisfying task building IndiGo.  It is now time for me to step off the treadmill and sometime in the near future embark on my next adventure. I wish all my colleagues at IndiGo the very best as they move on to the next phase of growth.” Taylor has more than 40 years of experience in large, world class airlines. During 2016 and 2017, he was the Executive Vice President of Revenue Management and Network Planning at IndiGo. Prior to that he held various senior management roles at United Airlines and US Airways in the areas of Corporate Planning, Strategy, …