Indian badminton star PV Sindhu and her coach were stranded at Dubai International Airport following an explosion near their location, triggered by escalating tensions in the Gulf region.
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.
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.
An IndiGo aircraft grazed the wings of an Air India Express plane at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday, leaving the wings of both aircraft damaged, officials said.
So far this week, more than 90 flights have received bomb threats and most of them have turned out to be hoaxes.
Over 100 flights were delayed at the Delhi airport on Friday morning due to technical problems with the air traffic control system and authorities are working to fix the issues, sources said.
Under the civil aviation ministry, AAIB is responsible for the classification of safety occurrences, involving aircraft operating in the Indian airspace into accidents and serious incidents.
It added that as per international protocols under the International Civil Aviation Organisation, all information on the investigation will be provided by the government of India.
Air India will soon have a new crew management system that will help strengthen rostering rules and enable faster recovery from scheduled disruptions. In a message to the staff on Friday, Air India CEO and MD Campbell Wilson said that in the next two weeks, there will be the CAE Crew Management System that will "strengthen our systems' adherence to rostering rules, improving the tracking of training & qualifications, and enabling faster recovery from schedule disruptions". The new system also comes against the backdrop of concerns flagged by pilots' unions about rostering issues.
Several airlines, including Air India and IndiGo, have cancelled flights to and from Kathmandu due to the temporary closure of Tribhuvan International Airport amid anti-government protests. Passengers are advised to defer travel until the situation stabilizes.
After a London-bound Air India aircraft crashed shortly after taking off from the Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, the spotlight is back on India's history with aviation disasters.
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.
The DGCA has asked airlines to inspect the fuel switch locking system in their Boeing 787 and 737 planes after a preliminary probe report into the Air India crash found that the switches were cut off before the accident.
Authorities are carrying out DNA tests to establish the identity of the victims as many bodies were charred beyond recognition or badly damaged in the deadly June 12 crash.
Air India Express and AirAsia India have moved to a unified reservation system, whereby passengers can make bookings for both airlines through an integrated website. The move is part of the ongoing process of merging AirAsia India with Air India Express. The combined entity will focus on leisure-oriented and price-sensitive markets.
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 has got to be the biggest error in aviation. If it is the biggest error, then all those individuals in positions of power should be removed because they have caused the biggest meltdown in Indian aviation history.'
The civil aviation ministry reports six aircraft engine shutdown incidents and three May Day calls in India this year. The Air India plane crash investigation is ongoing, with all aspects being examined.
Amid concerns over alleged poaching of pilots, Air India told Akasa Air that petitioning a competitor to collude in restricting the rights of staff to change an employer could potentially violate the competition law. Air India CEO and managing director Campbell Wilson wrote a letter to Akasa Air CEO Vinay Dube against the backdrop of Akasa Air raising concerns about Air India Express hiring pilots from the airline. The letter, dated September 21, followed a letter by Dube to Tata Sons on September 11.
When specifically asked about the reason for the crash and whether Air India is privy to any preliminary findings, Chandrasekaran said, "One would have to wait for the probe to conclude."
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.
IndiGo, which operates the largest fleet among Indian carriers, has reported the highest number of serious engine-related incidents.
Sources in the know said a homeless man barged into the room at the hotel where the female cabin crew was staying and assaulted her.
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.
According to the officials, generally, a passenger is not served more than 100 ml of liquor during a flight.
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.
Indian carrier Vistara on Monday announced voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) and voluntary separation scheme (VSS) for its permanent ground staff ahead of its merger with Air India, which had announced similar plans for its non-flying permanent staff two weeks ago.
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.
Air India Boeing 787-8 crash in Ahmedabad has brought back all traumatic memories.
Around 600 non-flying staff of Air India and Vistara are likely to be impacted by the two airlines' mega-merger, and efforts will be made to provide job opportunities to the affected employees within Air India group and Tata companies, sources said on Wednesday. Tata Group-owned loss-making full-service carriers -- Air India and Vistara -- together have more than 23,000 employees.
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.
Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu assures a clean investigation into the Air India plane crash, dismissing concerns of manipulation. The statement follows calls for a judicial probe and criticism of selective leaks from the preliminary report.
DGCA provided temporary relief to IndiGo, which is partially owned by Rahul Bhatia, by rolling back the night duty definition to 12 am-5 am from 12 am-6 am earlier, and allowing its pilots to do six night-landings from two earlier, besides other relaxations.
Sunil Bhaskaran, AirAsia India's chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD), is the front-runner to head the low-cost carrier that will take birth after the merger of Air India Express and AirAsia India, sources said. In a show of confidence, the airline's board extended Bhaskaran's tenure by three years -- until March 2025 -- in a meeting held earlier this year, according to the documents reviewed by Business Standard. Moreover, AirAsia India's board of directors has increased Bhaskaran's salary twice in 2022 -- first in January by 5 per cent and then in June by 7 per cent, the documents showed.
The Air India Group has started vacating its offices, which are currently being operated from government-owned properties, from this month, as part of its strategy to consolidate workspaces across the country. The loss-making Air India and its international budget arm Air India Express were taken over by the Tata Group on January 27 this year, after successfully winning the bid for the airline on October 8, last year. Besides these two airlines, Tata Group also holds a majority 51 per cent stake in Vistara, its joint venture airline with Singapore Airlines (SIA), and a 83.67 per cent stake in budget carrier, AirAsia India.
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.
Over the past eight months, a team of 80 people has been diligently working to harmonise operating procedures across four airlines run by the Tata group, as part of two mergers, revealed Campbell Wilson, Air India's chief executive officer (CEO), on Friday. The Tata group is consolidating its aviation business by merging four airlines into two: Air India and Vistara are merging to form a single full-service carrier, while AIX Connect and Air India Express are combining to create a unified low-cost carrier (as a subsidiary of Air India).
'Other than blaming the pilot, there is zero accountability.'
On landing at the airport, the passenger was attended by a doctor, subsequently treated at a hospital and discharged, the airline said in a statement on Saturday.
India's last three major commercial aviation accidents --Patna (2000), Mangaluru (2010), and Kozhikode (2020) -- could offer critical safety lessons for the ongoing investigation.
