Category Archives: Aviation

V Resorts, one of India’s leading leisure hospitality start-ups, with over 150 properties spread across 22 states, has announced the raising of $10 million in Series A funding to mark their next phase of growth.  The fresh round of investment is led by various HNIs. Existing investors, including Bedrock Ventures and RB Capital, also participated in the round. Through this investment, the company has plans to expand its footprint in India and also enter new markets across South Asia and the Middle-East, with a target of reaching 1000+ properties and 15,000+ rooms in the next three years. Within India, a significant part of the growth will be focused on entrenching markets such as Andhra Pradesh where the company is already in talks with the Andhra Pradesh Government to promote state-wide tourism.  The company, with its in-house tech infrastructure, also plans to invest more on the technology platform, giving customers a 360-degree independent travel experience, and plans to now build its own SAAS products for the hospitality industry.

Air India has announced that it will resume its flight services to Madrid from New Delhi from April 18. The national carrier temporarily suspended services to Madrid, as well as Birmingham from New Delhi last month after the closure of Pakistan airspace for all West-bound flights to and from India. Air India operates three times-a-week flight services to Madrid from New Delhi on its flagship aircraft Boeing 787-800. The airline released a statement saying, “Air India is set to resume its thrice-a-week service on the Delhi-Madrid-Delhi sector from April 18, after a brief interlude to cater to the consistent heavy demand from passengers both in Spain and India.” The national carrier has announced return fares for the Madrid-Delhi-Madrid route, starting from Euro 487.

In an attempt to stronghold its base in Mumbai, SpiceJet has announced to launch daily direct flights to Colombo, Dhaka, Riyadh, Hong Kong and Kathmandu by the end of May. “SpiceJet would be the first Indian budget carrier to launch daily direct flights on the Mumbai-Colombo, Mumbai-Dhaka, Mumbai-Riyadh, Mumbai-Hong Kong and Mumbai-Kathmandu sectors,” said the airline in a press statement. Ajay Singh, Chairman and MD, SpiceJet said, “We are delighted to connect a large number of popular international destinations from Mumbai, a city that has always been a key and integral part of our network.” “The airline already operates flights to Colombo from Chennai and Madurai, Dhaka from Kolkata, Dubai from Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Pune, Kochi, Kozhikode, Mangalore, Amritsar, Jaipur and Madurai, Hong Kong from Delhi and Jeddah from Hyderabad besides an upcoming flight from Kozhikode,” the release said.   The Indian budget carrier will use Boeing 737 NG aircraft on the new routes.

Travelport has announced a new agreement with Airport Authority Hong Kong (AA) to promote the multi-modal connectivity services at Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA) to travel buyers in Asia, Europe and North America. HKIA is one of the busiest passenger airports across the globe connecting to over 220 destinations through over 120 airlines. In 2018, HKIA handled 74.7 million passengers . As a regional hub and a multi-modal transport center, it offers travelers extensive land and sea connections to cities throughout the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, which includes Macao, Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou and beyond. The digital media solutions provided by Travelport will help HKIA offer a hassle-free experience to passengers traveling into China. The technology allows overseas travel buyers – such as travel agencies and travel management companies – to pre-book the airport’s multi-modal transport services for their customers in 18 markets from across the world. The new digital solutions will also allow HKIA to embrace new business opportunities by targeting nearby airport destinations and promoting its multi-modal, multi-stop connecting services. Commenting on the agreement, Steven Yiu, Deputy Director, Service Delivery, AA said: “Travelport facilitates the engagement of the global agency community and attracts travelers to enjoy our world-class facilities and services. Our partnership will enable travel agencies to offer their customers a seamless journey to various destinations in the Mainland via HKIA.” Jason Clarke, Travelport’s Senior Vice President and Global Head of Travel Partners, added: “HKIA is uniquely positioned in a vibrant region and connects a cluster of fast-growing cities. We are pleased to secure this long-term partnership, which will see us further promote the offerings of the airport to travel buyers and travelers across the world through …

Indigo has started operating its domestic flights from the T2 terminal of Mumbai International Airport. Out of the 20 flights, nine originate from Mumbai to destinations such as Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Indore, Kochi, Nagpur, Vadodara. Airline’s all other domestic flights will continue to operate from Terminal 1 and International flights from Terminal 2 of the airport. “As these new flights, will be operating from Terminal 2, Mumbai, please ensure you check your flight number and terminal before you leave for the airport,” IndiGo said in a statement. For Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Indore and Nagpur, IndiGo has planned to introduce two new flights. The airline will start operating 2 additional flight on Mumbai-Nagpur route from May 4 and 4 additional flight on Bengaluru-Mumbai- and Hyderabad-Mumbai route. With a fleet size of 218 plans, Indigo operates about 1,300 flights on a daily basis to 53 domestic and 17 international destinations.

The domestic market of India continues to perform strongly, again registering double digit growth over the year to February, according to International Air Transport Association (IATA). China and Russia topped the growth chart with 11.4 per cent and 10.1 per cent year-on-year growth rates respectively. This marks the 54th consecutive month of double-digit domestic RPK growth for India. A generally solid economic backdrop, combined with continued growth in the number of airport pairs have all contributed to this sustained growth performance.

Narrowbodies account for ¾ of the total current fleet, with widebodies contributing a further 10 per cent, as per a recent ‘Project Rupee Raftaar’ report by the Ministry of Civil Aviation. The remainder consists primarily of turboprops and regional jet aircraft. Reflecting the relative size of the domestic and international markets, the composition of the current inservice fleet is heavily tilted towards narrowbody aircraft. India, which has the third-largest aircraft order book (including wide-body and narrow-body aircraft) after the US and China, now has more narrow-body orders than China, CAPA India said in one of its reports.

To bring down flight cancellations and expand the airline’s international and domestic presence, SpiceJet has announced to induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease. The airline in a statement said, “SpiceJet will induct 16 Boeing 737-800 NG aircraft on dry lease and has applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for a No Objection Certificate (NOC) to import the aircraft.Subject to regulatory approvals, the aircraft would begin joining SpiceJet fleet in the next ten days.” “The sudden reduction of aviation capacity has created a challenging environment in the sector. SpiceJet is committed to working closely with the government authorities to augment capacity and minimise passenger inconvenience,” said Ajay Singh, Chairman and MD, SpiceJet. Under dry lease, the lessor provides the airline with the aircraft but without any crew member, while under wet lease, the lessor provides the aircraft along with complete crew.

The recent grounding of aircraft of the Indian aviation industry has hit its total capacity, resulting in increased airfares and more inconvenience to the passengers, thereby affecting passenger traffic growth. According to Investment Information and Credit Rating Agency of India (ICRA), 98 of the total 670 aircraft in the industry have been grounded. These include 86 aircraft (75% of total fleet) of Jet Airways grounded due to non-payment of lease rentals to the aircraft lessors owing to its liquidity problems, and 12 aircraft (16% of total fleet) of SpiceJet grounded as required by a regulatory directive post technical issues reported with the flight control software of the Boeing 737 Max (B737 Max) aircraft. Elaborating further, Kinjal Shah, Vice President and Co-Head, Corporate Sector Ratings, ICRA, says, “These groundings have impacted ~15% of the total industry capacity. The consequent flight cancellations have resulted in ~30-40% increase in airfares over September 2018 to March 2019. However, India being a high price sensitive market, this has impacted the domestic passenger traffic growth from October 2018 onwards, with the Q3 FY2019 Y-o-Y growth reduced to 12.4%, as against the H1 FY2019 Y-o-Y growth at 19.8%. In fact, the domestic passenger traffic growth in January 2019 reached a 53-month low of 8.9% Y-o-Y, and February 2019 was further lower at 5.6% Y-o-Y. The passenger traffic growth for March 2019 is expected to be lower than that in February 2019. Moreover, these issues have raised concerns on passenger safety.”

Dubai International Airport’s (DXB) runway will be closed for repair work from April 16 to May 30. Owing to this, Air India and Air India Express have announced a change in airport for some of their flights during the runway renovation period in Dubai International Airport. Some of the flights will be affected during the Dubai runway closure and operate out of the Sharjah International Airport. Affected flights are- AIR INDIA: Daily direct flights from Mumbai (AI 983) and Chennai (AI 906) to Dubai, daily flights in the route Visakhapatnam/Hyderabad/Dubai/Hyderabad/Visakhapatnam (AI 951/952) and the Bengaluru/ Goa/Dubai/Goa/Bengaluru flights on Thursday and Sunday (AI 993/994) AIR INDIA EXPRESS: (IX 813/814), (IX 383/384) — daily flights from and to Mangalore, IX 141/142 (Delhi/Dubai/Delhi on Sunday), and IX 435/434 (Kochi/Dubai/Kochi on Sunday). (Source: Gulf News)