He was focussed on his career and determined to join the prestigious National Defence Academy, located at Khadakwasla near Pune in Maharashtra, said some of his classmates from the Class 11 batch of St Vincent School.
Four Air India pilots have resigned and five have taken voluntary retirement while 10 pilots of Air India Express have left their job, seven last year and three this year, since January 2012, Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.
Air India Express currently operates 145 daily flights, down from about 200 six months ago.
Based on whether you choose the aviation, Bhopal or LIC numbers, and on the official death toll (in the absence of any other verifiable number), the value of human lives lost in the pandemic would range from Rs 16,500 crore to Rs 94,000 crore, explains T N Ninan.
The central government has agreed in-principle to Air India employees' main demands. It fears an industrial dissension now could impede the process of privatisation. It has agreed to bear the cost of liquidation loss on account of transfer to the Employees' Provident Fund Organisation (EPFO) from company-owned trusts, inclusion of employees in the central government health scheme (CGHS), and encashment of leaves. The template of the Air India process will be followed for other public sector undertakings up for privatisation at a later date.
Travels to Gulf accounted for 40% of India's international air traffic in 2016.
The EoI and the share purchase agreement would be issued in January itself for the bidders. While Air India's net loss in 2018-19 was around Rs 8,556 crore, its current total debt is around Rs 80,000 crore.
Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata group was among "multiple" entities who on Monday put in preliminary bids for buying the government's stake in loss-making carrier Air India.
Aviation consultancy CAPA on Thursday said allowing domestic airlines to take advance bookings from April 15 is "unfair" to consumers since a decision on lifting the nationwide lockdown is yet to be taken. During the lockdown period only special flights approved by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, medical evacuation flights and those carrying cargo, including medical equipment, to and from different parts of the country are operational.
Survivors of Air India Express passenger plane from Dubai that crashed outside the airport in Mangalore after overshooting the runway on Saturday, recounted their near death experience.
The Tata group may have to deploy upwards of $1 billion to improve the airline's passenger reservation system, upgrade and refurbish Air India's fleet, primarily the wide-body aircraft which are the mainstay for the airline's international operations, people in the know said. While the group has not yet decided on how it intends to integrate Air India with its existing airlines AirAsia India and Vistara, sources said the first task will be to refinance Air India's existing loans, upgrade its aircraft gradually, and rewrite multiple business contracts with vendors and suppliers. "They will have to do 100 things to stabilise the airline and will have to put in a lot of money," DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said, confirming that many aircraft are grounded.
Air India on Monday said its subsidiary Air India Express' flight operations were in conformity with regulatory requirements and all its pilots and engineering staff are fully-qualified and trained to run operations in tune with international procedures.
Demand for the earlier variant 737NG planes is also expected to pick up due to the grounding of MAX planes.
A K Chopra, a retired DGCA official, had flagged concerns regarding engineering, flight safety, operations, and training standards in the airline and subsidiaries, thus warning the management of grave safety risk. He also called for the replacement of the chief of flight safety Harpreet A De Singh, who, he said, did not meet the regulatory requirements for holding the post.
She was originally scheduled to board the ill-fated Air India Express plane bound for Mangalore.
It was a double tragedy for a family in Kasargod district of Kerala which lost its Dubai-based son, who was on his way to attend his father's funeral, in the crash of the Air India Express flight in Mangalore. Siddique Sulaiman, a trading salesman, was on his way to attend his father's last rites in Kasargod and ended up boarding the fateful Air India Express flight to Mangalore.
This will be the largest claim in the aviation sector for Indian insurers in the last three years
As a part of its route rationalization and cost-cutting measures, Air India plans to replace its twin-class aircraft with all-economy ones belonging to low-cost subsidiary Air India Express on few Gulf routes from this month end.
The government proposes to divest 76 per cent of Air India, along with its shareholding in Air India Express and its ground-handling subsidiary, AISATS.
Apart from the main company, five of Air India's subsidiaries and a joint venture firm have been included in the strategic sale plan.
From the Gulf countries to Malaysia and the UK to the US, the multi-agency operation christened 'Vande Bharat Mission' will see the state-owned AI operate 64 flights till May 13 in the first phase to ferry around 15,000 Indian nationals from 12 countries.
Starting this October, Air India Express will fly Cochin-Chennai, Cochin-Hyderabad, Cochin-Bangalore, Bangalore-Chennai, Chennai-Kolkata, Hyderabad-Kolkata and Kolkata-Agartala.
Airlines sought a limited period concession of the standing rule of slot allocation, which mandates that firms must operate at least 80 per cent of their allocated slots.
Air India buyer has to take over interest-bearing debt of Rs 16,500 crore a large portion of which is aircraft related, meaning they are backed by aircraft value
"When the A320 plane, which did not have any passengers as it was heading to Moscow to bring back stranded Indians under Vande Bharat Mission, had reached Uzbekistan's airspace, our team on ground realised that one of the pilots had tested COVID-positive," senior Air India officials said.
Jet Airways remains the number one airline serving foreign routes.
The international operations of Air India seem to be the main attraction for IndiGo, which has also flagged concerns about some foreign overseas airlines being allowed "disproportionate access" to the Indian market.
Ernst & Young LLP India has been appointed as transaction adviser for the strategic divestment process.
An Iran Air flight carrying Indian pilgrims stranded in coronavirus-hit Iran landed at the airport in Mumbai on Friday afternoon, an official said.
All scheduled commercial passenger flights have been suspended in India since March 25 when the Modi government imposed a lockdown to contain the novel cornavirus pandemic.
Air-India is planning to acquire six long-range aircraft on lease to meet its route expansion demand. The national carrier will also acquire three more aircraft on lease for its low cost airline Air-India Express.
In the 'Additional guidelines for quarantine of returnees from abroad/contacts/ isolation of suspect or confirmed cases in private facilities', released on Thursday evening, the ministry said there are large number of facilities such as hotels, service apartments and lodges which are "unoccupied due to impact of COVID-19 on travel and tourism".
Out of the total amount, Rs 17,359.77 crore is aircraft loan, while Rs 31,517.04 crore is working capital loan.
High drama unfolded at the airport in Thiruvananthapuram on Friday when the pilot of an Abu Dhabi-Kochi Air India flight pressed the hijack button in panic after passengers created a ruckus in the cockpit following diversion of the plane to Thiruvananthapuram
Aviation regulator the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Friday asked for recordings of the black box of the Air India Express plane after a high drama unfolded at Thiruvananthapuram when some agitated passengers entered the cockpit, leading its pilot to press the hijack alarm.
Kozhikode will connect Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Bahrain, Doha, Dammam and Muscat daily; Salalah will be twice a week, Kuwait thrice a week and one weekly service to the city of Al-Ain.
In an interview to rediff.com's Vicky Nanjappa, Mohammad Beary, who represents the victims as president of the Mangalore Air Crash Victims Family Association, explains the manner in which Air India has been trying to settle the dues without adhering to the Montreal convention.
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