More than four lakh additional seats will be available to passengers every day from October when the railways will move to a technology which will help it generate power from engines, rather than power cars, for lighting and air-conditioning. Officials say by October 2019, over 5,000 coaches of the Indian Railways will operate on the new technology. It will not only enable trains to shed their power cars and make way for more coaches but also save the national transporter more ₹6,000 crore in fuel bills annually, they say. Currently, there are one or two power cars at the end of every train in every LHB rake where the electricity to be supplied to coaches is produced in a diesel generator, known as End on Generation (EOG). The new technology, “Head on Generation” (HOG), is used worldwide, by which power supply is tapped from overhead power lines and distributed to train coaches.

On the third leg of its four-city roadshow in India, Nepal Tourism Board formally launched its ‘Visit Nepal 2020’ campaign in the city of Mumbai and interacted with key outbound agents here. Robin Regmi, Officer – South Asia Unit, Tourism Marketing and Promotion, Nepal Tourism Board, who was part of the three-member delegation, said, “India is very close to us and to me personally. It is a major market for us and we have seen a steady increase in Indian tourist arrivals since 2015 after Nepal experienced a major setback. We are now back to normal and request the travel trade in India to help us regain our lost glory in terms of tourism.” He added that the tourism board is now actively looking at organising big sporting and Mice events as well as festivals to draw in the numbers. Among them is the Nepal Tourism investment Summit to be organised in January 2020. The team will travel to Bengaluru for a similar launch on July 15, 2019.

GMR Infrastructure has announced it has executed definitive agreements for the proposed investment of Rs 8,000 crore by Tata Group, an affiliate of GIC and SSG Capital Management in its Airports Business. The proposed investment of Rs 8,000 crore will consist of Rs. 1,000 crore equity infusion in GAL, and Rs. 7,000 crore towards purchase of GAL’s equity shares from GIL and its Subsidiaries. GMR will now focus on potential restructuring of the business by way of a demerger of its Energy, Highways, Urban Infrastructure and Transportation businesses, leading to separation of its Airport Business, subject to customary consents including corporate & regulatory approvals.

In an exclusive interview to Tourism Breaking News, Vijay Mohan, President of Tour and Travels Association of Andhra Pradesh, said, “We met the tourism minister and discussed about increasing tourism in the region. Among other things, we discussed in detail about starting a Visit Vizag 2020 campaign. We also want to tap a renowned cricketer like Mahendra Singh Dhoni as the brand ambassador. The reason for choosing Dhoni is that in all his media interactions about Vizag, Dhoni has been quoted as saying, ‘This is where I first fell in love.’ It’s a great tag line for us. We also want to develop circuits for religious tourism for which we need to develop the shakti peeths, we also have a wonderful Buddhist circuit.”  

The Appointments Committee of the Cabinet has approved the appointment of Arun Kumar, Additional Secretary and Financial Advisor, Ministry of Civil Aviation as Director General in the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). Kumar, an IAS officer of Haryana cadre, was heading DGCA as an additional charge since June this year and has now been handed over a full-time charge. He spent time as joint secretary in the aviation ministry before being promoted as additional secretary and now DGCA chief. Kumar succeeds BS Bhullar, who held full-time charge of DGCA as chief from December 2016 to May 2019. Bhullar has now been appointed as chairman of Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA).

France will introduce a new charge on plane tickets from next year, with revenue used to fund environment-friendly alternatives, informs the country’s transport minister- Elisabeth Borne. She says, “The “ecotax” costing between 1.50 euros ($1.7) and 18 euros ($20) will apply to most flights departing from France.” The only exceptions will be for domestic flights to Corsica and France’s overseas territories, and connecting flights that pass through France. It will not apply to flights arriving in France. Air France has strongly disapproved of this announcement. According to a recent statement by Air France- “This new tax would significantly penalise Air France’s competitiveness, at a time where the company needs to strengthen its investment capacity to more rapidly reduce its environmental footprint, notably as part of its fleet renewal policy. This measure would be extremely penalising for Air France, of which 50% of its flights are operated out of France, and notably for its domestic network, where losses amounted to above 180 million euros in 2018. In addition, last month, the government had ruled out taxation at national level due to the unfair competition that this would cause.” The statement further reads- “The government’s decision is all the more incomprehensible as this new air transport tax would reportedly finance competitive modes of transport including road transportation and not the energy transition in the air transport sector. Such a transition could have been facilitated by supporting the implementation of sustainable biofuel industries or disruptive innovations. The Air France group is committed alongside all the industry players to reducing its CO2 emissions by 50% by 2050, in accordance with the Paris climate agreement objectives. Air France has been contributing to the European Union’s …

Air France-KLM will increase its passenger-carrying capacity between India and Europe by more than 25 per cent from this winter, a senior executive of the airline said. Jean-Noel Rault, the General Manager (Indian sub-continent), Air France-KLM, said,”If you ask about the commitment of Air France-KLM to the Indian market, as of winter, on the yearly basis, it would be over a million seats to India. Currently, we are over 800,000 seats. It would be over 25 per cent increase.” Similarly, Air France is also planning to increase its frequency on Delhi-Paris route from five to seven during the winter season this year. Source: PTI

SriLankan Airlines will enhance connectivity to India with new flights to Ahmedabad and Calicut. The operations will began in 2020. Vipula Gunatilleka, CEO, SriLankan Airlines said, “We wanted to enhance connectivity to Gujarat and hence will start a new connection to Ahmedabad. We were earlier operating to Calicut, but had to stop that for some reason and will restart this route again and hope to record growth in the region.”

As per a recent order of the General Administration Department of Government of Jammu & Kashmir, Navin Kumar Choudhary (IAS), Principal Secretary, Industries and Commerce department, will now also hold the charge of Administrative Secretary – Tourism department. A joint statement by Travel Agents Society of Kashmir (TASK), Travel Agents Association of Kashmir (TAAK), Association of Kashmir Tour Operators (AKTO), Pilgrim and Leisure Tour Operators Forum (PILTOF) and Kashmir Hotel and Restaurant Owners Federation (KHAROF) said that the appointment of Choudhary is a right decision to help improve the tourism sector in the state. Earlier this year, Choudhary had also been give the charge of Administrative Secretary, Information Technology department, in addition to his own duties until a regular arrangement was made.

According to the recent Economic Survey, Ministry of Finance, outbound tourism has increased in recent years, with the number of departures of Indian nationals from India at 23.94 million in 2017 as against 21.87 million in 2016, with a growth rate of 9.5 per cent in 2017. This was more than double the foreign tourist arrivals in India.