Category Archives: Aviation

The late night flights from Bengaluru to Kochi and Ahmedabad on Air India have been a great success and the airline is now all set to start this service to New Delhi. This service will begin from June 5 and will take-off from Bengaluru at 11 pm and will reach Delhi at 1:30 am, the next day. The fare of Red Eye flight will be cheaper than the day-flights and is expected to attract lot of flyers. (Source: New Indian Express)

SpiceJet will launch 20 new domestic flights from next week, mainly focusing on its Mumbai base. New services include flights to Tirupati, Vijaywada and Thiruvananthapuram from Mumbai and will be launched between May 26 and May 30. The airline has stepped into the slots vacated by Jet airways for all the latest launches out of Mumbai and so the flights will depart from Terminal 2 of the airport. The tickets are also available to purchase. SpiceJet in a statement said that out of 20 flights, 18 of them are connecting Mumbai with cities like Goa, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kolkata, Kanpur, Patna with additional frequencies. All new flights will be operated daily on Boeing 737-NG aircraft expect the Mumbai-Kolkata flight, which will not be operational on Wednesday and Sunday.

KLM Royal Dutch Airlines is all set fly from Bengaluru to Amsterdam, starting October 28, 2019. The launch of this new flight comes in line with the suspension of Jet Airways’ service to the route. The frequency of the flight will be thrice a week on Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner with a configuration of 30 seats in business class, 45 seats in the economy comfort class and 219 seats in economy. It was in 2017 that Jet Airways made Amsterdam its hub and launched its flight on the route in cooperation with Air France-KLM and the latter’s US partner, Delta Air Lines. KLM has reportedly said that Jet’s suspension of international flights in April, the carrier has decided to increase its capacity to India in order to be able to offer “alternatives to our customers and to continue to meet market demand.

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.