Category Archives: Aviation

Air India has agreed to accept travel agents’ corporate credit card for booking, revealed Sunil Kumar, President, Travel Agents Association of India (TAAI). Speaking in New Delhi, at the UFTAA presentation for TAAI Northern Region members, he revealed that the team of TAAI had a meeting with Ashwani Lohani, CMD, Air India; Pankaj Srivastava, Director-Commercial, Air India, and other representative of the national carrier. “I am very impressed with the response from Ashwani Lohani, Pankaj Srivastava, and the entire team of Air India on allowing travel agents to use their corporate credit cards to do ticketing. We have been consistently talking to them on the airline having no objection if a customer uses his credit card, or the agent uses the customer’s credit card. However, the agent could not use his corporate credit card to make the booking. However, they listened to us, and we are highly obliged that may be within a week, the agent corporate credit card will be used by Air India as a form of payment.”

Air India Express will start flying from Kozhikode to Ras Al Khaimah four times a week from March 29 to October 24, 2016. The new flight has been added as part of the new summer schedule by the airline. On Wednesday and Saturday, it will fly directly from Kozhikode to Ras Al Khaimah and then go to Al Ain. However, on Monday and Friday, it will fly to Ras Al Khaimah via Al Ain. The timings are 10:40 am for all the four flights. The move comes as part of Air India Express’ plans to increase its frequency between Kerala and the Middle East to 119 flights per week from the present 96 a week in order to benefit Keralites working in Gulf countries. Acknowledging Kozhikode as its largest revenue centre, AIE increases its focus in this market by enhancing offered capacity to an all time high of 11,718 seats per week from the present 8,184 seats. The fare for the Kozhikode-Ras Al Khaimah flight is Rs. 11, 604.

The Cathay Pacific Group has announced that its’ wholly owned sister airline Dragonair is to be rebranded as Cathay Dragon. The two will remain as separate airlines, operating under their own licences. The rebranding will see a new livery created for Cathay Dragon that features a Cathay-style brushwing logo. This livery will appear for the first time on one of Cathay Dragon’s Airbus A330-300 aircraft in April and will be progressively introduced to the rest of the airline’s fleet. By more closely aligning the two brands, this rebranding will capitalise on Cathay Pacific’s high international brand recognition and leverage on Cathay Dragon’s unique connectivity into Mainland China – one of the world’s fastest-growing business and leisure travel markets. The Cathay Pacific Group will launch a major international advertising and marketing campaign later this year to promote recognition of Cathay Dragon and the benefits this rebranding will bring to passengers. Ivan Chu, Chief Executive, Cathay Pacific, said, “We are very proud of what we have achieved together. Cathay Dragon is a brand that will be recognisably part of the Cathay Pacific Group for our customers from different parts of the world. The rebranding will enable us to capture the fast-growing passenger flows across the two carriers by creating a more seamless travel experience. We are building on what is a true Hong Kong success story that has made our city a leading international aviation hub and gateway to and from Mainland China markets. This rebranding will sharpen our competitive edge by offering an attractive Cathay-led brand package that carries the assurance of a consistently high-quality customer experience,” Algernon Yau, Chief Executive Officer, Cathay Dragon, said, “We can assure our customers that Cathay Dragon will …

AirAsia X has announced the commencement of its new direct flight connecting New Delhi to Kuala Lumpur. The inaugural flight will land at the New Delhi international airport on February 3. “As part of our efforts to expand our flight network and to provide enhanced connectivity for our guests in the region, we are pleased to announce that we have started operating direct flights connecting New Delhi & Kuala Lumpur,” a statement from the airline said. The airline will be celebrating the inaugural flight on February 4 in New Delhi. Benyamin Ismail, Chief Executive Officer, AirAsia X Berhad will be making this special announcement at the celebration of the launch of this sector along with H.E. Datuk Naimun Ashakli Mohammad, High Commissioner of Malaysia to India, in the presence of Dr. Mahesh Sharma, Minister of state for Culture and Tourism (Independent Charge) and Civil Aviation and Dato Fam Lee Ee, Board of Director, AirAsia X. To celebrate the recommencement of New Delhi from Kuala Lumpur, AirAsia X offered an all-in-fares from as low as INR 7990 one way for the booking period Nov 23-29, 2015, with a travel period from February 3, 2016 until February 5, 2017.

Starting February 1, Air India will enhance frequency on its Delhi-Surat sector from 4 days to 7 days. At present, Air India operates a, CRJ-700 aircraft four times a week. The flight AI 0607 departs from Delhi at 0745 hrs and arrives Surat at 0925 hrs. The return flight AI 0608 leaves Surat at 0955 hrs and lands in Delhi at 1135 hrs. Delhi-Surat-Delhi AI flight is highly popular among textile and diamond businessmen and provides seamless connectivity between two business cities. It also offers convenient connections to other international flights from/to Delhi.

IndiGo has launched eight new flights in its domestic network connecting Delhi to Chennai, Chennai to Kochi, Guwahati to Delhi and Hyderabad to Delhi, with effect from January 27, 2016. Effective January 27, IndiGo introduced second non-stop daily flight between Chennai and Kochi, third daily non-stop flight between Delhi and Guwahati, ninth daily non-stop flight between Hyderabad and Delhi and 10th daily non-stop flight between Delhi and Chennai. With 679 daily flights connecting 39 destinations, these new flights will further consolidate IndiGo’s position as the fastest growing airline in India. Commenting on the new flight schedule, Aditya Ghosh, President IndiGo said, “We are delighted to announce the take-off of our new flights from Delhi, Chennai, Kochi, Guwahati and Hyderabad. The increased flow of tourist and business traffic to and from these cities gave us the perfect opportunity to launch additional flights and serve more passengers on board. We are confident that these new flights will prove immensely popular and convenient to our travellers.”

GoAir has started to commercially operate night flights to Port Blair Veer Savarkar International Airport. Its maiden commercial charter flight G8 1291 took off from Bengaluru at 23:15 hrs on January 20, and landed at Port Blair airport at 01:50 hrs. As a part of its charter operations, GoAir will operate three night flights in this sector in January, five night flights in February and six night flights in March. All flights will arrive at Port Blair from Bengaluru at 1.50 am and depart for Bengaluru from Port Blair VSI Airport at 2.20 am. Effective March 27, 2016 and as per its new summer schedule, GoAir will also start operating its first ever daily direct flights to Port Blair from Bengaluru.

From April 25-June 15, Tigerair will increase flight frequency on its Hyderabad-Singapore and Tiruchirappalli-Singapore route by adding one seasonal route each, taking the total count to seven and 14 weekly flights. The increase of the frequency on these routes is due to the overwhelming response from these markets during peak season, said Teh Yik Chuan, Director – Sales and Marketing, Tigerair. To ensure an overall memorable experience, Tigerair has partnered with Singapore Tourism Board to encourage travellers from India to witness the thrilling sights and sounds of Singapore. The budget carrier has also announced an all-inclusive return fare to Singapore for passengers travelling from Hyderabad during Mar 9-Apr 16. The special fare can be availed by booking tickets from Jan 20-31.

Starting March this year, Kuwait Airways will add two more flights on the Kuwait-Ahmedabad and Kuwait-Bengaluru routes making it five flights each. The airline recently increased its frequency to twice double daily from Kuwait to Cochin and added three flights to Ahmedabad and Bengaluru each. Philip Saunders, Chief Commercial Officer, Kuwait Airways, said, “We are seeing a change in the load factors from India. We are excited about our new schedules with new destinations like Ahmedabad and Bengaluru while consolidating our operations in other places by introducing double-daily flights to Cochin that we did in December 2015. The second reason why things will continue to improve for us is the growth of Indian market and also because our strategy is focusing on depth rather than breadth. We want to introduce more frequencies as we can and get more relevant to Indians living in Kuwait. A third reason is that we are recruiting the right people to engage with the travel agents to find new ways to co-operate with them.” The airline still offers IATA commission of three per cent in India apart from some incentive it offers to the travel agents.

Owing to high security alert in the run up to Republic Day celebrations, IndiGo has extended its normal closure of check-in time of 45 minutes to 60 minutes to minimise flight delays and congestion in the security hold area. The airline has asked its passengers to arrive 15 minutes prior against the original check-in time i.e. 45 minutes effective January 19 to January 31.