Category Archives: Aviation

Guruprasad Mohapatra, Chairman, Airports Authority of India (AAI) has said that the government is working on a proposal to privatise 20-25 airports, managed and operated by the authority and a final decision will soon be taken. “We have privatised six airports recently. We are now planning to privatise 20-25 airports in next phase with an expectation that there will be a significant participation by foreign airports. The Airports Authority of India is in the process of identifying airports with annual passenger traffic of 1-1.5 million. We will recommend them to the Ministry of Civil Aviation and they will take a final decision,” said Mohapatra in a press briefing.   Explaining about the planning related to the second round of privatisation, he said, “What we have done is we have appointed a consultant to understand relative attractiveness of various airports for private sector investments. It is open for everyone to bid. There are tremendous possibilities. With this (success in first round), I am sure that in the next round of privatisation we do, I am hoping to see a lot of foreign airports participating in it.”   In November last year, the government had decided to privatise airports in Lucknow, Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Mangaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, and Guwahati for operation, management and development through public-private partnership (PPP) model.  

Ethiopian Airlines has opened reservation for its new route in India- Bengaluru which will operate four times a week on Boeing 737-800. The airline will operate on Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 11 PM, local time and will reach Bengaluru the next day at 8 AM, IST. The new route is expected to increase more tourists travelling from Africa directly and will help connect flights to Europe and beyond.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for June 2019 has been 0.59 per cent, according to DGCA. Air Deccan recorded highest cancellations at 18.67 per cent, while the least were with IndiGo at 0.10 per cent. TruJet recorded 2.64 per cent and Air Asia was at 2.33 per cent. Vistara was at 1.11 per cent followed by Air India at 1.07 and SpiceJet at 0.58. GoaAir had only 0.22 per cent cancellations in June.

Union Civil Aviation Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri has informed in Lok Sabha that India’s civil aviation sector is experiencing dynamic growth and air passenger traffic on an annual basis is expected to touch 1 billion in the coming years. Currently, the number of air passengers on an annual basis is around 345 million. He also informed that government has taken a decision to privatise six airports, including at Lucknow and Ahmedabad. Out of the six, three have been awarded to Adani group and issues related to two others have been resolved. Earlier this month, the Cabinet approved leasing out Ahmedabad, Lucknow and Mangaluru airports to Adani group.   In 2018, the government decided to lease out airports at Ahmedabad, Jaipur, Lucknow, Guwahati, Mangaluru and Thiruvanathapuram. All the six airports were won through bidding by Adani group.

Indonesia’s national carrier, Garuda Indonesia has temporarily terminated its Mumbai operations. This marks the end of direct flight from the South Asian nation to Mumbai. However, the airline is hoping to revive the services by the end of this year, apart from looking at Delhi as the next destination in its network. Garuda had started the direct connection in April 2018. Earlier, the airline used to operate one-stop service to Mumbai from Jakarta via Bangkok, before starting a non-stop service Airbus A330 between Denpasar and Mumbai. The only connection which India shares with Indonesia now is from Chennai to Medan via Kuala Lumpur on Batik Air, part of the Lion Air group.

In a recent update, Emirates has reduced its frequency from Dubai to Thiruvananthapuram for its winter schedule of 2019/20 starting 27 October.  The overall frequency has been reduced from 11 to 7 weekly. Right now, two flights operate on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday has a single flight deployed on this route. This route is operated by 2-class Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft.

IndiGo has announced new daily non-stop flights on Delhi-Agartala and Delhi-Dibrugarh routes, effective August 14.  IndiGo will be the first airline to fly on Delhi-Agartala route. Bookings on these routes are open with immediate effect. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo added, “IndiGo is committed to offering its leisure and business travellers an on-time, courteous and hassle-free service and affordable flying experience consistently.”

As per data released by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), GoAir posted 86.8% On Time Performance, the highest among scheduled domestic airlines. The airline has also carried 13.3 lakh passengers during the same month. The airline also clocked highest load factor of 94%.

According to DGCA, passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-June 2019 were 706.80 lakhs as against 684.83 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 3.21%. However, the air traffic in the month of June alone rose by 6% surpassing May’s growth which was registered at 3%. According to DGCA, the passenger load factor in the month of Jun 2019 has shown marginally increasing trend compared to previous month due to ongoing tourist season.

Air Tanzania has launched its maiden direct flight from Dar es Salaam to Mumbai. This is the seventh international route for the airline and the first outside Africa. ATCL’s recently acquired Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner  departed the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) Terminal-III in Dar es Salaam for Mumbai at 7.30pm local time and arrived into India early morning. Passengers on the flight included a huge delegation from Tanzania including the minister for Works, Transport and Communications, Isaak Kamwelwe, senior government officials, ATCL staff and local journalists. Commenting on the developments, Kamwelwe expressed optimism that the new route would help in cutting the time spent by passengers who had to connect through Nairobi, Dubai and South Africa. Ladislaus Matindi, Managing Director, ATCL, said that a return ticket is available at what he termed the ‘entry’ price of $378.