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.
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.
Company working on 'win-win' solution.
Already, according to a KPMG study on the subject, India's airlines will need approximately 13,800 by 2012 (the demand projected for the next year is 7,628 and despite ministry efforts, the problem is yet to go away.
Jet's supremacy has now been challenged by a nimble and aggressive Kingfisher which, in just two years and following Mallya's buyout of Air Deccan, is commanding the same market share as Jet Airways and Jetlite.
GMR Infrastructure, the co-developer of Delhi International Airport (DIAL) and Hyderabad International Airport (HIAL), is looking at bidding for privatisation of Prague airport in the second half of 2008, one of the more profitable state-run enterprises in East Europe.
He came to do one job but finds himself doing another. He came to work with a certain set of people and finds himself working with quite another. That's the piquant situation in which Ramki Sundaram, the 38-year-old officiating chief executive officer of SimpliFly Deccan finds himself today.
Even as the date for the two new state-of-the-art international airports in Bangalore and Hyderabad to start operations comes closer, lobbying to prevent closure of the existing facilities -- at the Airport Authority of India's Begumpet airport in Hyderabad and HAL airport in Bangalore -- has got louder.
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