Category Archives: Aviation

Domestic passengers will account for around 63 per cent of the total growth by 2037, or 228 million additional passengers, as per a recent ‘Project Rupee Raftaar’ report by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. Foreign passengers will contribute less to overall growth, representing 37 per cent of the total market growth, equal to 131 million additional passengers. Of the 6.1 per cent average annual growth in Indian air passenger demand over the next 20 years, improvements in living standards (via higher incomes) are expected to contribute the major share, at 5.1 percentage points. Favourable population and demographic factors are forecast to contribute 0.6 percentage points to annual growth. Other factors, mainly future technological gains, will contribute 0.8 percentage points per year.

According to the recent traffic report by Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), Passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-Apr 2019 were 464.47 lakhs as against 453.03 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 2.53%.  However, The passenger load factor in the month of Apr 2019 has shown decreasing trend compared to previous month due to end of vacation period of various sectors.

Thai Smile Airways, the wholly owned regional subsidiary of Thai Airways will resume its Bangkok-Jaipur flight from June 1, 2019. Earlier, the airline used to operate daily flights till March 31 and stopped the operations due to construction of a taxi track parallel to the runway. The flight will take off for Bangkok at 2:15 am from Jaipur International Airport. Reportedly, no flights have been operating between 10 pm to 5 am since March 31. Currently, Air Asia operates flights to Bangkok four days a week.  

The national carrier Air India will be offering an additional 3,500 seats per  week from June 1 on Mumbai-Dubai-Mumbai route. Also, from June 2, 2019, the airline will offer an additional 3,500 seats in a week on the Delhi-Dubai-Delhi route. On domestic front, Air India will be introducing new flights on Varanasi-Chennai-Varanasi route and Bhopal-Pune-Bhopal route starting from June 5, 2019. The flights on the Delhi-Raipur-Delhi route will be increased to 14 flights per week from the existing seven flights per week schedule. The number of flights per week will be increased on Delhi-Amritsar-Delhi, Delhi-Bengaluru-Delhi, Chennai-Kolkata-Chennai, Chennai-Ahmedabad-Chennai, Mumbai-Vizag-Mumbai and Delhi-Vadodara-Delhi routes.

Skyscanner, the world’s travel search engine, has announced its latest partnership with SpiceJet, the Indian low-cost carrier, which will allow Skyscanner users around the world to search for flights and view airfares with SpiceJet. The flight integration, powered by Skyscanner’s global flight search technology, enables travellers in India to have direct access to competitive fares from the Indian airline, which launched in 2005. Mike Ferguson, Commercial Director, APAC at Skyscanner said, “We are truly delighted to announce our latest partnership with SpiceJet. This integration is a great example of how Skyscanner continues to grow our global partnerships and means our platforms will better serve the needs of our 80+ million monthly active users. Travellers are at the very heart of what we do at Skyscanner.” Skyscanner also assimilates b2b agents like Akbar in India

Air Canada, the flag carrier of Canada in a recent schedule update has temporarily shut its Toronto-Delhi operations starting from June 15 to July 31.  This route is currently operated by Boeing 787-9 aircraft everyday. However, the airline will continue to operate on its Vancouver-Delhi route. This decision has been made owing to the closure of the Pakistani airspace.

Airports Authority of India‏ (AAI) has signed its Annual Performance Contact for FY2019-2020 with the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The MoU specifies various parameters and targets to be delivered during the year. AAI has undertaken an ambitious CAPEX target of Rs 5,160 crore towards the infra-development of airports.

Virgin Atlantic is relaunching flights between London Heathrow and Mumbai, India, with flights on sale from May 28, 2019. The first service is set to commence on October 27, 2019 and will complement the airline’s long-established route between London and Delhi. The daily service will also provide seamless connections via Heathrow between India and the US. The new flights will depart and arrive Heathrow in the morning to align with connecting flows to and from US. The configuration will be 31 Upper Class, 35 Premium, 192 Economy. The Mumbai flights will be operated on Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 787-9 aircraft, offering customers Upper Class, Premium and Economy Light, Classic and Delight cabins. Virgin Atlantic offers a full-on board service in each of its cabins, providing complimentary food, drink and over 300 hours of entertainment across films, TV and music channels. All of the airline’s 787-9 are fully Wi-Fi enabled.

AirAsia India aims to start international operations by October this year, confirmed the airline’s Chief Operating Officer, Sanjay Kumar. He said, “Our plan is to first fly to the Southeast Asian market and start with flights to Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur. Our target is that we will fly about 7-8 per cent of our total available seat kilometres to international locations in the first year of operations.” Kumar said while the Indian locations have not been decided, it would be perhaps from Delhi, Bengaluru or Kolkata. The eventual plan is to fly from most of the 19 destinations that it currently flies in and add in another two for international destinations. However, the plan for the second year is to go beyond Southeast Asia to West Asia, China as well as CIS countries in the next phase, which would require about four planes. The CIS countries are Azerbaijan, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Ukraine.   The airline, which received its 21st plane recently, is set to double its fleet by April next year, after which it will have 40 Airbus A320 planes. Most of the additional planes will come in the later part of this year and in the beginning of next year and Air Asia is already talking to prospective companies to take aircraft on lease. However, it is expected to add in two more aircraft to the fleet in June and July.  

Korean Air has announced that starting June 1, the airline will cease to operate First Class Cabin on Airbus A330-200 which operates on Delhi (KE 482/KE 481) and Mumbai (KE 656/KE 655) routes. The airline has a total of six first-class cabins, which will be discontinued starting next month. As per the revised configuration, the airline will only have two-class configuration on both the Delhi and Mumbai routes. The business class seats would increase from 24 to 30 and the economy class cabin would remain to have 188 seats. The statement from Korean Air also informed that the above mentioned aircraft and routes, ‘the two-class configuration’ will also be implemented on several other aircraft and routes including Toronto, Vancouver, Brisbane, Auckland, Nadi, and Vladivostok.