Category Archives: Aviation

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.  

KLM,  the flag carrier airline of the Netherlands, will add one extra frequency between Amsterdam (AMS) and Mumbai (BOM) on Thursdays, starting from 2 September 2019. As of 30 September 2019, KLM will add another frequency on Wednesdays, making a total of five flights per week. All additional flights will be operated by a Boeing 787 Dreamliner. The flight schedule of the additional flights is as follows: KL 877 AMS d. 12:15  BOM a. 00:05+1 KL 878 BOM d. 02:20  AMS a. 08:00  

Lufthansa Group is to increase its Distribution Cost Charge (DCC) to £14 due to the weakening value of the pound. The latest hike takes effect from 1 June, with all tickets issued before this date subject to the current DCC of £11.30. The DCC does not apply for sales partners connected to Lufthansa Group airlines’ Direct PI or the free of charge, web-based SPRK booking platform. In the UK, the airline group claims that a “strongly increasing number of travel agents are in a position to take advantage of this saving, leading to a consistent price advantage of up to £60 on a round trip over the traditional GDS. The charge increase follows IAG’s decision to move to a £9 per leg fee in September last year, up from the previous fee of £8. Source: BBT

SpiceJet has introduced a daily non-stop flight on Mumbai-Jeddah-Mumbai sector from July 5. Mumbai is the third destination after Hyderabad and Kozhikode which is being connected by SpiceJet with the pilgrim city of Jeddah. SpiceJet’s flight SG 68 will depart from Mumbai at 7.30 pm (all local times) and arrive in Jeddah at 10.15 pm on the same day. The return flight SG 69 will depart at 11.30 pm and reach Mumbai at 6.20 am on the following day. Celebrating the launch, SpiceJet has announced a special fare of INR 12,399 (all-inclusive) for Mumbai – Jeddah and INR 15,399 (all inclusive) for Jeddah – Mumbai. Reiterating the airline’s commitment on augmenting direct connectivity between metros and key non-metro cities, SpiceJet has enhanced its operations on the Mumbai-Dehradun-Mumbai (2nd frequency) and Mumbai-Guwahati-Mumbai (2nd frequency) sectors. SpiceJet has also announced a new flight connecting Guwahati to Bagdogra. SpiceJet will deploy its Boeing 737 NG aircraft on both the international as well as domestic routes. Shilpa Bhatia Chief Sales and Revenue Officer SpiceJet, said, “Mumbai has always been one of our key destinations and with the launch of these new flights we intend to further ramp up our presence from the city. We are delighted to announce our new flight connecting Mumbai with Jeddah which will offer more convenience and flexibility to passengers travelling between the two cities for pilgrimage, business or leisure.” “The new domestic flights will help in minimizing the passenger inconvenience caused due to the sudden shortage in capacity within the Indian aviation industry.” She added.