Category Archives: Aviation

According to the sixth annual Global Travel Forecast, published by CWT and GBTA, India’s strong economic growth is fuelling a greater demand for business travel and driving up prices. Airfares are forecast to increase 5% (in local currency terms; 0% in USD terms), while hotel rates and ground transport prices are expected to climb 6.8% (1.8% in USD terms) and 4.5% (-0.5% in USD terms), respectively. While the global economy is doing well overall – and expected to grow a solid 3.6% in 2020 – a raft of uncertainties are set to put a damper on pricing. “Earlier this year we saw a spike in airfares after Jet Airways ceased its operations in April, so we’re already at a high base in 2019,” said Vishal Sinha, CEO, India, CWT. “With other airlines adding capacity to fill the vacuum, fares have begun to normalize and we expect that to continue next year. However, if the rupee weakens against the dollar, Indian carriers could be faced with bigger fuel bills and we might see that being passed on to travelers.” “Hotel rates are also expected to rise, as the demand for rooms outpaces supply, especially in secondary cities like Chandigarh, Jaipur and Ahmedabad. At the same time, the commercialization of mid-tier properties by players like Oyo are also pushing prices upwards.”

According to a recent report by Airports Authority of India, all operational airports handled 210.84 thousand aircraft movements and 28.93 million passengers, during the month of June 2019.  Out of this, 5.63 million were international movements and 23.30 were domestic passengers. While, the growth in international passenger movement from last year during the same month was 2.7 per cent, domestic passenger market witnessed 4.6 per cent growth.

The latest IATA Economics Chart of the Week states that with favourable forecasts in income per capita and population, there has been continued development in India’s air transport where the market appears positive, despite the recent disruption. “This is consistent with our long-term passenger forecast which expects the growth in India to propel it to the world’s 3rd largest air transport market by the mid-2020s,” says report.

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.”