On Wednesday, Surat airport remained operational for an extra one hour waiting for the landing of an Air India Express flight that took off more than an hour late from the national capital.
Amid mounting safety concerns and the cancellation of at least 66 flights that were to be operated with Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft, DGCA officials held a detailed review meeting with top Air India and Air India Express executives.
India's last three major commercial aviation accidents --Patna (2000), Mangaluru (2010), and Kozhikode (2020) -- could offer critical safety lessons for the ongoing investigation.
Civilian flight operations from the 32 airports across northern and western India, including Srinagar and Amritsar, were suspended from May 9 to May 15.
It will be too premature to draw conclusions on the role of pilots from the preliminary investigation report into the fatal crash of Air India plane last month and the final report will mention about the most probable cause for the accident, former Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB) chief Aurobindo Handa said on Sunday.
The Boeing 787-8 aircraft -- VT-ANB -- was 11.5 years old and had flown for more than 41,000 hours, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Air India Boeing 787-8 crash in Ahmedabad has brought back all traumatic memories.
The operations of many global carriers, including Qatar Airways, have also been impacted due to the airspace curbs in the wake of the Middle East tensions.
Two of these flights were cancelled after the passengers had already boarded the aircraft, the airline said.
Indian airlines are likely to face additional weekly expenses of Rs 77 crore for international flights operated from north Indian cities as the airspace curbs result in increased fuel consumption and longer flight duration. An analysis of the number of overseas flights and back-of-the-envelope calculations based on increased flight time as well as approximate expenses by PTI showed that the additional monthly operational costs could be over Rs 306 crore.
More than 300 flights have been cancelled and at least 25 airports, including Srinagar, have been temporarily shut for operations amid restrictions in the wake of the armed forces launching missile attacks on terror targets in Pakistan on Wednesday morning.
The truth about what triggered the fatal crash of the Dreamliner should not only help bring the guilty to book, but also outline the future course of action in aviation safety, notes Nivedita Mookerji.
'Other than blaming the pilot, there is zero accountability.'
'Who tried engine relight?' 'If the first officer was the one flying at takeoff, the captain may have taken control immediately post-thrust loss.' 'But the AAIB report doesn't clarify any of this.'
'CORSIA has set impossible targets. It tries to limit countries to the emission levels of the number of aircraft that they had in 2020. That has to be opposed.'
'...rectification has to happen then and there, and that takes additional time.'
An Air India aircraft with 242 passengers on board heading to London crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon, the police said.
According to the officials, generally, a passenger is not served more than 100 ml of liquor during a flight.
'That refresh programme -- because they are big aircraft and we cannot ground them all at the same time -- will last well into 2027.'
Executives from India's leading airlines are conducting internal meetings to devise alternative routes for their international flights that currently pass through Pakistani airspace.
With only a few days to go before the country celebrates Holi, several airline companies offered discounts on fares on the occasion of the festival of colours. While two airlines are providing discounts on both domestic and international networks, another has the offer only for the domestic sector. Low-cost airline Akasa Air said it is offering an all-inclusive one-way fare starting at Rs 1,499 on domestic routes.
After the merger of Indian and Air India, their subsidiaries - Alliance Air and Air India Express - would be merged as well.
Aircraft supply to airlines will remain constrained during the next four to five years due to the supply chain issues being faced by plane makers Airbus and Boeing and there is not much that carriers can do beyond optimising their flight network expansion, Air India CEO and MD Campbell Wilson said on Tuesday.
As many as 19 flights have received bomb threats in three days and a Riyadh-bound IndiGo flight was diverted to Muscat due to the threat, according to officials.
Kochi will be the new headquarters of Air India Express, while Thiruvananthapuram will be the main engineering centre of the airline.
The airline will operate an additional flight every Monday, originating from Chennai and flying via Tiruchirapalli to Abu Dhabi, thereby bring the total number of flights it operates on this route to three per week.
In the past few days, more than 40 flights operated by the Indian carriers have received bomb threats which later turned out to be hoaxes.
Tata Group-owned Air India shaved off its losses by 60 per cent to Rs 4,444.10 crore in FY24 over the previous year, according to the Tata Sons annual report for 2023-24. The airline had reported a loss of Rs 11,387.96 crore in FY23, the annual report said.
Air India has covered a lot of ground since privatisation and its global coverage will further increase in the years ahead, the airline's chief Campbell Wilson said on Wednesday. He also said the interior refit of the single-aisle fleet, serving domestic and short-haul international destinations, is underway, and will be completed by mid-2025.
The threats via microblogging platform X came a day after three international flights originating from Mumbai received bomb threats, causing trouble to hundreds of passengers and airline crew.
In a bid to retain employees and lure more youngsters to join the company, Air India Express would come out with attractive packages for its crew, a top official of the low-cost airline subsidiary of Air India said on Wednesday.
Air India would add four more aircraft to the Air India Express fleet this year to expand its budget flight services, a top company official said.
The bulk of Indian carriers flying to Dubai are low-cost carriers, which include IndiGo, Air India Express, and SpiceJet.
The move follows the recent probe report by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that highlighted safety concerns involving Boeing 737 aircraft equipped with Collins Aerospace SVO-730 Rudder Rollout Guidance Actuators.
Close on the heels of introducing a direct flight from Dubai to Nagpur on September 24, Air India Express is adding two more Indian destinations to its schedule, Jaipur and Lucknow, said Freddie Vaz, regional Director of Air India.
So far this week, more than 90 flights have received bomb threats and most of them have turned out to be hoaxes.
In a statement, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said the airport and emergency teams responded swiftly and effectively after a full emergency was declared at 18.05 hours.
The Air India Express Employees Union, which is affiliated with the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, has written a letter to the chief labour commissioner (central) in this regard.
"Heartbroken by the loss of Shri @RNTata2000 Ji, whose visionary leadership not only transformed India's industry but also played a pivotal role in shaping our aviation sector," Naidu said in a post on X.
The Tatas have collectively increased their aggregate airlines seat capacity across domestic and international markets by an impressive 20 per cent, going from 64.03 million in calendar year (CY) 2023 to 76.72 million in the current CY, according to data shared by the group that controls Air India in which Vistara has been merged recently. The Tatas also run Air India Express in which Air Asia India has been merged.
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