Category Archives: Aviation

India’s national carrier Air India is looking to add new routes between India and North America. Speaking at the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2017 in Mumbai, Pankaj Srivastava, Director Commercial, Air India, revealed, “We want to expand in North America and are exploring new routes like Houston and Dallas. We currently cut down travel time between the two continents by at least 10 hours.” He added, “There will also be a tenth destination in Europe soon. We are thinking of Scandinavia, and looking at either Glasgow or Copenhagen as options. We are also looking at increasing our flights into Australia and intend to take it to five flights into Sydney and five into Melbourne.”  

The annual masterclass on Indian aviation — the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2017 — started on a positive note, albeit with a caveat. This was reflected in the introductory address made by the summit chairman Kapil Kaul. Speaking at the conference in Mumbai, he said, “The next financial year is expected to be the third consecutive year of domestic growth above 20-25 per cent. That should mean profitability, strengthening of the industry, more jobs and more competitiveness. However, this projection could also be misleading and possibly leading us to risks.” The two-day summit started on Feb 8 and will end the following day with a half day conference on corporate travel.

The latest scheduled airline in India — Zoom Air — which received an air operator’s permit (AOP) on February 3, might start operations from Pasighat airport in Arunachal Pradesh. The airline will launch its scheduled commercial operation on Delhi-Kolkata-Durgapur-Delhi route on February 12. The airline is in talks with the Arunachal Pradesh government to connect the newly built airport. Koustav Mohan Dhar, Executive Director and CEO, Zoom Air has reportedly revealed that they are awaiting clearances from the state government as well as the DGCA.

Oman Air is growing its capacity to India by increasing flight frequencies from 126 to 161 flights per week between Oman and its 11 Indian destinations to boost the tourism sector. The airline informed that from February onwards, Mumbai, Delhi, Calicut and Hyderabad will be operated with 21 weekly flights each and Lucknow with 14 weekly flights. “The demand for all 11 of our Indian destinations has always been high and the increased frequencies offer yet more choice and convenience to our guests. Oman Air first launched flights to India in the 1990s and the demand for seats has grown exponentially not only increasing tourism traffic and revenue but also promoting vital trade agreements between the two countries,” said Paul Gregorowitsch, Chief Executive Officer, Oman Air. The extended traffic entitlements will give a further boost to the tourism sector, prompting many discerning tourists to visit Oman as well as India. With this development, Oman Air is flying its wide bodied aircraft to selected destinations in India. Source: The Indian Express

RwandAir will add two new destinations to its portfolio in April this year, first Harare on the 01st of April with daily flights and then Mumbai on the 03rd of April with four flights a week. Mumbai, RwandAir’s first ever intercontinental destination, will see one of the airline’s new Airbus A330’s, configured with a Business, Premium Economy and Economy class layout deployed for the nonstop flights from Kigali. Harare will from April onwards be combined with Lusaka as flights to Johannesburg revert to non-stop services, also operated with Boeing B737NG aircraft.

Ethiopian Airlines has announced that it will expand its India operations further by adding Chennai to its network. Esayas Woldemariam Hailu, Managing Director (International Services), Ethiopian Airlines, said, “We are considering adding Chennai to our network in India soon. It is difficult to comment on the timeline as there are a lot of things being planned. We don’t have an exact date yet but we want to keep it as a surprise for the travel trade. This will be thrice weekly and upscale it to daily as the route develops.” Ethiopian Airlines made its debut flight to Mumbai in December 1971 and has since increased its airlift to 28 scheduled weekly flights to Mumbai and New Delhi. The airline also celebrated its 70th anniversary of the corporate airline as well as 45 years of service to Mumbai. Speaking about the celebrations lined up for this, Hailu added, “On this occasion, we are offering a 70 per cent and 45 per cent discount in our Business Class and Economy Class fares, respectively for a week till February 10 but valid for travel for the rest of the year for travel originating from India.”

The Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) received an increase of over 22 per cent in budgetary allocation at Rs 5,167.60 crore in the Union Budget for 2017-18. Out of the ministry’s total allocation, a good chunk will be for Air India, which is to get Rs 1,800 crore. The amount will be extended to the national carrier as part of the bailout package announced by the then UPA government in 2012. Apart from that, the airline will be given Rs 508 crore as part of investment in public enterprises. National airports operator AAI has been allocated Rs 2,543 crore, apart from a budgetary support of Rs 100 crore. The budgetary funds for aviation watchdog DGCA has been stepped up significantly to Rs 230.56 crore for 2017-18. The amount is at Rs 29.67 crore for the current fiscal.

The overall air passenger volumes (pax) have been consistently increasing and are likely to reach 310 million by FYE18, says India Ratings and Research (Ind-Ra). This will be driven by the aspirations of the middle class to travel in flights and a reduction in price differential between air travel and rail journey, including the recently increased cancellation fees for train tickets. The slowdown in economic growth during the first half of the current decade had minimal impact on pax growth. However, the 2008 global economic crisis and fuel and currency crises in FY13 had a pronounced impact on air traffic growth. The gradual increase in private final consumption expenditure has been buttressing India’s pax growth since early FY14. Ind-Ra’s sensitivity on economic growth also underlines the strong underlying fundamentals and continued growth in pax volumes. Ind-Ra’s also reports that large gateways such as Mumbai and Delhi airports and mid-market airport hubs such as Bengaluru and Hyderabad airports have displayed strong volume resilience, despite unfavourable macroeconomic trends.

Albert Tjoeng, Assistant Director, Corporate Communications, Asia Pacific at International Air Transport Association (IATA),  takes heart from the Union Budget. “The Finance bill 2017 has added new provisions for the future introduction of submission of PNR data by airlines to the Indian Customs, he says. He adds that IATA hopes that the established global standards for transmission of PNRGOV data would be adhered to. “We would also urge that stakeholder consultations precede the development of any regulations detailing the form and data elements for this information,” he concludes.

Etihad Airways has announced a third daily flight on the Abu Dhabi – Bengaluru route, effective March 26, 2017. The triple daily schedule will provide greater choice to local passengers travelling between the two cities, and improved connectivity to destinations across the GCC, North America and Europe via the airline’s Abu Dhabi hub.The capacity increase underscores the airline’s commitment to offer guests more travel options between Abu Dhabi and key destinations across its network. With a new daily late night departure from Abu Dhabi, and early morning service from Bengaluru operated with a two-class Airbus 321, the schedule provides additional online connectivity to and from a number of destinations, including Doha, Jeddah, London, Dublin, New York and Dallas. Peter Baumgartner, Etihad Airways Chief Executive Officer, said: “Our expanded services between Abu Dhabi and Bengaluru are in line with Etihad Airways’ strategy to offer greater travel options when aircraft availability and market conditions permit. “The extra flights to Bengaluru will cater to the strong demand between both cities, and bring closer our global network to and from Bengaluru over our Abu Dhabi hub.” Etihad Airways launched flights to Bengaluru, capital of the southern Indian state of Karnataka, in January 2011 with four services a week, rising to daily two months later. It has steadily grown capacity with additional frequencies and aircraft upgrades to its current double daily operation. More than 700,000 guests have been flown on the route over the past six years. Partner carrier Jet Airways will codeshare on Etihad Airways’ enhanced Bengaluru services, and also offer connectivity from Bengaluru to destinations across India.