Category Archives: Aviation

Bahrain International Airport welcomed the arrival of the inaugural Air India Express flight from Kunnur, India to Bahrain, following the commencement of a new service. As the first direct route from Kunnur to Bahrain, it opens up many new opportunities for tourism and trade between the two countries. A BAC delegation led by Chief Commercial Officer, Ayman Zainal received the inaugural flight alongside Indian Ambassador to Bahrain, His Excellency Alok Kumar Sinha, Air India Express Country Manager, Saket Saran, and other officials. The airline, a subsidiary of Air India, will operate a service between Kunnur International Airport and BIA twice a week. The route from BIA includes one stopover in Kuwait. The flight from Kunnur International Airport is the fourth direct route to BIA after Kochi, Kozhikode, and Mangalore. In total, there are seven routes from BIA to India, all of which are direct. Mr Zainal said: “We hope that the introduction of this new route will further strengthen bilateral relations and serve the needs of the large expat community in the Kingdom. We look forward to working with Air India Express to offer its customers a seamless and smooth passenger experience.” He added: “With the launch of the new Passenger Terminal Building later this year, BAC expects to attract further interest from leading airlines wishing to explore the potential of adding new routes linking Bahrain to the rest of the world. In addition to giving passengers more destinations to choose from, route development enables flows of trade, investment, and tourism that will support wider economic growth in line with the Kingdom’s Vision 2030.”

In view of the spike in demand for air travel in the upcoming peak summer season, Vistara has announced the addition of 14 flights, for the period April 16 – July 15, 2019. Three new routes have been added for the specified duration— Mumbai – Bengaluru, Mumbai – Hyderabad, and Mumbai – Kolkata. In addition, the airline will be flying the Pune – Hyderabad route for the period April 7 – April 30, 2019. Vistara also recently added Raipur (with double daily flights to/from Delhi) and Dibrugarh (with daily flights to/from Delhi via Bagdogra) to its steadily expanding network.    

Hahn Air has closed a successful first quarter of 2019, and has already integrated ten new carriers into its global network of more than 350 air, rail and shuttle partners by the end of March of this year. The new partnerships include two new interline agreements. The flights of the Thai low-cost airline Nok Air (DD) and of Precision Air (PW) from Tanzania can now be issued on the insolvency-safe HR-169 ticket. Travel agents can find and book their flights under the airlines’ own two-letter-codes in selected GDSs even in markets where the carriers are not members of the local payment systems (BSPs). In addition, eight new carriers joined the network of H1-Air partners of the global consolidation service Hahn Air Systems. On behalf of the tour operator President Travel and Tours, four Nepalese carriers are now using the H1-Air product: Buddha Air (U4), Himalaya Airlines (H9), Shree Airlines (N9), and Yeti Airlines (YT). Moreover, AB Aviation (Y6) from the Comoros Islands, Flair Airlines (F8) from Canada, Skyway CR (LC) from Costa Rica and Germania Flug (GM) from Switzerland opted for the H1-Air solution. As a result, all eight carriers are now available under the designator H1 in all major GDSs. Over 100,000 travel agents in 190 markets can book their flights and issue them on the HR-169 ticket. Finally, four existing partners extended their cooperation with Hahn Air by entering into a Dual Partnership with the leading provider of distribution services. The two Kenyan carriers Five Forty Aviation (5H) and Fly-SAX (B5), as well as JC Cambodia Airlines (QD) from Cambodia and Air KBZ (K7) from Myanmar complemented their interline agreements with the H1-Air product. Travel agents can find …

DGCA has approved the summer flights schedule of Jet Airways for March 31 to April 25 only, according to an official document, accessed by PTI. The summer schedule of flights of all other domestic airlines such as Vistara, IndiGo, Air India and GoAir have been approved till October 26, according to the document. As per the international practice, DGCA approves two flight schedules in a year, namely, ‘summer schedule’ effective from Sunday of the last week of March and ‘winter schedule’ effective from Sunday of the last week of October. The summer schedule begins on 31 March, 2019 for all the airlines.

Amidst turbulent times of the domestic airlines industry. Suresh Prabhu, Minister of Civil Avation has said that government cannot interfere in their-day-to-day operations. He further said that efficient operations and financial performance are individual responsibilities of the carriers. “In view of intense competition, rising costs, shortage of pilots and grounding of planes is hurting many domestic carriers. The government has been constantly responding to industry conditions and cited measures taken, including reduction in central excise duty on jet fuel to 11 per cent from 14 per cent,” the minister said to PTI. Prabhu further said the airline industry is a dynamic industry which requires continuous adjustment according to global and domestic needs. “It is our endeavor to support the industry, however, as stated we cannot interfere in day to-day operations of the airlines,” he noted.

Air India is all set to fly from Delhi-Kannur, starting April 2, 2019. The newly launched flight will be operating five times a week. The flight will commence from Delhi at 0905 hours on Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday and will reach Kannur at 1215 hours. After this it will continue to operate from Kannur at 1300 hours to Kozhikode at 1330. The flight will return to Delhi by 1845 hours on the same day via Kannur.

GVK led Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) has completed its runway re-carpeting and maintenance work at the intersection and will resume regular work after a twenty-one-day runway shutdown. The key to success of this project was handing precision on-time re-carpeting work of the runway within its stipulated six hours, maintaining Mumbai’s challenging flight schedule. The re-carpeting of the 50,000 sq. mt. intersection was carried out using state-of-the-art technology which allows ease application, quick-setting features and enables airports to take a load of normal air traffic immediately after application. The resurfacing work was carried by a team of 600 workers in-line with a well-planned exercise to ensure that the work in hand is completed on-time. A military disciplined process was followed right throughout the planning, designing and construction stages with limited aircraft downtime. Mumbai airport is the busiest single-runway airport in the world, having two cross runways, 09/27 (main runway) and 14/32 (secondary runway) handling about 950+ aircraft movements per day. Operating to over 112 destinations in India and around the world, CSMIA has helped the airport set a new record by handling 1,004 aircraft on a single runway on December 8, 2018, surpassing its previous record of handling 1,003 flight movements in a day in June 2018.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI), New Delhi, is planning to roll out express check-in counter service for air passengers taking domestic flights from the airport. The service can only be availed by travellers with handbags as luggage. Reportedly, the Delhi airport will introduce this facility by April 2019 at Terminal 2, where low-cost airlines such as Indigo, SpiceJet and GoAir operate. The facility is expected to be extended to Terminals 1 and 3 in future.  

The growth of more than 20 per cent in the number of new routes in India provided a sizeable boost to passenger demand in the market, according to a latest report by International Air Transport Association (IATA). The surging number of international flyers is drawing airlines to new air routes in India. The increase in international air traffic from India and a focus on business and leisure travellers has prompted not only foreign airlines such as Air Italy and NokScoot to launch new routes to destinations in the country but has also got several Indian carriers including Jet Airways and IndiGo to start operations on foreign routes. Although the combination of GDP and network developments explain more than three quarters of the variation in domestic revenue passenger kilometers (RPK) growth rates over time, other factors such as tourism attractiveness, availability of travel alternatives, trade flows and demographics account for the residual growth in traffic in the country. India has become the third largest domestic aviation market in the world and is expected to overtake the UK to become the third largest air passenger market by 2025, states a report by India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF). The report reveals that by 2036, India is estimated to have 480 million flyers, which will be more than that of Japan (just under 225 million) and Germany (just over 200 million) together.

Singapore’s Changi Airport has been declared the world’s best airport for the seventh time in a row, while New Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport and Mumbai’s Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport features at  59th and 64th spot respectively, according to the UK-based consultancy firm Skytrax’s World Airport Awards. The Delhi airport has also been adjudged as a global 4-star airport  and ascribed as Best Airport in India and Central Asia. The other Indian airports in the list were the Rajiv Gandhi Hyderabad International Airport at 66, up 10 points and Bengaluru’s Kempegowda International Airport at 69, down five points from last year’s rankings. Delhi airport was ranked 66th in 2018, while Mumbai airport stood at 63rd position last year.   The Tokyo International Airport (Haneda) was ranked number 2, up one place from 2018. It also won World’s Best Domestic Airport and World’s Cleanest Airport.   The 3rd spot was bagged by Incheon International Airport along with the prize for World’s Best Transit Airport. Last year, the airport stood at number in the ranking of best airport.