The Rs 4,675-crore Navi Mumbai airport project, which is being developed by CIDCO, may be delayed by a few months in the wake of serious objections being raised by the environment ministry. The project that has Cabinet clearance and approval from the International Civil Aviation Organisation will now be taken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for final clearance since the environment ministry has raised issues relating to the site.
He's taking charge of a carrier which is in the midst of dealing with a new reality. The ink on the merger is not yet dry and the internal politics has led to groupism within the senior management. Predictably, management attention has been diverted to handling personnel issues rather than on the core function of running the airline.
As companies put up glitzy boards and promotional hoarding, residents have watched in horror as the strain of this development begins to affect their lives.
Apart from lower rents, there's a host of other reasons companies offer for basing themselves in Gurgaon. With metro connectivity due to begin shortly and the opening of the NH-8 expressway, connectivity has already improved. A drive from Connaught Place to Cybercity now takes about 45-50 minutes from the earlier one-and-a-half hours.
Gurgaon is increasingly becoming India's corporate mecca. As one of Delhi's satellite cities, it is adding up space, especially in commercial areas. Hewitt, Dell and Indiatimes are some of the other companies who now find themselves in close proximity of the Golf Course. DLF is chalking out grand plans, several of which will be in the commercial space. DLF has built 17 mn sqft in residential high rises. But commercial development is already over 10 million in just four years.
Cabinet approval for greenfield airports within the 150 km radius of an existing airport is being done away with, according to the new greenfield airports policy, which has recently been sent for Cabinet consideration by the civil aviation ministry. This would have serious implications for airports in large metro cities including Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai, where a second airport will eventually be a reality.
New green-field airports at Bangalore and Hyderabad will offer passengers unmatched variety in food, drink and entertainment. Bangalore airport will have a sports bar by Kingfisher, Caf Coffee Day, Barista and Illy Espressomonte outlets. It will also have a Pizza Hut outlet. Hyderabad airport will have Bollywood theme restaurant and bar, KFC outlet and coffee outlets. It will also feature Indian Paradise Hyderabad Biryani outlet for the famous Hyderabadi biryani and curry.
With the nationwide agitation of airport authorities coming to a halt, passengers are still left with the burden of non-connectivity to the new airports. Parliamentary reports have been ignored while developing the new airports, which are now left with no proper infrastructure supporting connectivity. The government can however renegotiate with the developers and try to lift the burden from the passengers' head as they will have to shell out extra money and extra time.
Rashesh Shah is not your typical Gujarati businessman. He was among the first in his family to study in an English-medium school. He didn't just step into his father's business -- manufacturing and selling school exercise notebooks -- as all good conservative Gujarati boys tend to. He went on to study higher and higher (he followed a BSc in statistics with a one-year diploma from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, and then a two-year MBA from IIM, Ahmedabad.
The CMD thinks the carrier will be back in the black next fiscal; his colleagues can't understand how.
Govt is considering making connectivity an integral part of airport projects as it would benefit the passengers in the long run.
Someone needs to explain what makes some individuals more equal than others.
A new, earned respect is motivating executives to step into an entrepreneur's risky, challenging and not-so-steady shoes. They will now be in control of their own destinies - and will have no one to blame or to credit whether they flounder or flourish.
Indian skies appear a lot safer than the ground. In the air, with fly-by- wire technology in place in most aircraft, the pilot can be fast asleep for certain stretches of the flight and nothing, by and large, will go amiss.
Captain Gopinath's dream of making every Indian fly will now remain just that. But this will rise to another: Mallya's dream of making Kingfisher one of the world's top airlines.
Shome joined on October 1, 2004, for three years and his tenure had recently been extended till October 2009. However, he has decided to move on, sources in the finance ministry said he had not decided which of the options open before him will be exercised.
Apart from air pollution, poor infrastructure and a wobbly state administration, Bangalore has a new worry from March - how to leave town and get back to it once the new Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) opens its doors and the existing HAL airport on Airport Road shuts its doors.
Before Trans Air, Easy Air, King Air, X, Y and so on -- all of whom have been struggling to get clearances from the civil aviation ministry -- are permitted to start operations, some homework has to be done.
The situation is unlikely to improve in the near- to medium-term, as the crop outlook is far from satisfactory in most of the major wheat-exporting countries. Matters have got even worse because some of the other cereals, notably maize, are being diverted to bio-fuel production as a response to spiralling crude oil prices. The worst-affected, predictably, are the low-income, food-deficit countries, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, who face 25 per cent rise in their food bill.
Rumours of Prock-Schaeur's departure have been rife ever since he completed three years with the airline (which was when his contract freed him to leave the carrier without any financial implications). Wolfgang's departure will be the latest in a series of departures from Jet Airways. In the last few weeks, Kingfisher has lured away several senior executives including Murli Ramachandran, senior general manager for airport services.
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