Both Vistara and AirAsia India, along with their partners, are quietly putting together an aggressive plan to become a formidable force in the skies. At the core of this new push is their plan to go international this financial year.
IndiGo had the best on-time performance (OTP) of 95.4 per cent at four metro airports in February, while Go First secured the number two position with 94.1 per cent in the same month, according to data released by aviation regulator DGCA. Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai were the four airports where Indigo had the best OTP, the data released on Monday said. In January, the situation was inverse as Go First had logged the best OTP of 94.5 per cent at the four airports while IndiGo was at number two with 93.9 per cent OTP.
There was a case reported of suspected Covid-19 passengers aboard I5-732, Pune to New Delhi on 20th March 2020, seated in Row 1.
Tata Neu, the super app from the Tata group, has been downloaded by over 7 million users within seven weeks of its launch. And, the company wants to ramp this up to 150 million users in the next two years, said senior executives of Tata Digital in an internal magazine of the Tata group. According to data from App Annie, a mobile app tracking platform, the Tata Neu app has been downloaded by over 11 million users.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
Within two weeks of many airlines deciding to roll back salary cuts encouraged by a steady increase in traffic flow, a second wave of coronavirus along with rules of compulsory RT-PCR test has hit forward bookings. The fears of last summer, when the pandemic had overturned all the wisdom of airline boardrooms, have returned to haunt the aviation industry. According to an official in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, flight occupancy is down to 60 per cent from 70 per cent in the first week of March. Airline lobby group IATA estimates that low cost airlines need to fly at 80 per cent occupancy to be profitable.
Indigo continued its market leadership ferrying 5.77 million passengers in the month, followed by rival Spicejet with 1.86 million, and Air India carrying 1.55 million passengers. Goair, AirAsia India and Vistara transported 1.33 million, 7.72 lakh and 6.48 lakh passengers, respectively.
National carrier Air India became part of the 27-member global airlines grouping Star Alliance, as budget airline AirAsia India launched operations and Tata-SIA joint venture carrier Vistara received the flying permit and announced its intentions to start operations from January 9.
GoFirst, AirAsia India, Star Air and TruJet will resume all their domestic operations from Terminal 1 from October 20 midnight, the private airport operator said in a release.
Indicating its intentions to fly abroad very soon, proposed airline AirAsia India on Wednesday trashed the "bizarre" policy of allowing carriers to operate international flights only after five years of domestic operations.
People have said they would be inclined to travel for leisure during the festival and year-end season.
SpiceJet has decreased its domestic services by 31 per cent to 2,995 weekly flights in the upcoming winter schedule as compared to 4,316 weekly flights that it got approved for the winter schedule of 2019, the aviation regulator DGCA said on Thursday. Meanwhile, Vistara, another private carrier, has increased its domestic services by 22 per cent to 1,675 weekly flights as compared to 1,376 weekly flights for 2019 winter schedule, the regulator added. The winter schedule begins on October 31 of a year and ends on March 26 next year.
The group, comprising on 147 women and 20 men, were airlifted by an Air Asia chartered flight from Kochi to the Biju Patnaik International Airport in Bhubaneswar.
Except GoAir, all other Indian airlines have opened bookings for their domestic flights that will start operating from May 25. GoAir will open bookings on domestic flights from June 1 onwards.
Right from the early days of liberalisation, there have been political controversies surrounding several cases that landed on the FIPB table and which, in turn, have often led to court battles.
Singapore Airlines will face intense competition from AirAsia, which will launch its India operations later this year and Tiger Airlines, in which it holds a stake.
In March 2020, soon after the cessation of airline operations globally and domestic flights within India, many in the aviation sector had written Delhi-headquartered low-fare airline SpiceJet's obituary well before that of most of its rivals. Unlike IndiGo, GoAir (now rechristened Go First), Vistara and even AirAsia India, SpiceJet did not have founders or backers with deep pockets. Although it is the only other listed carrier in India besides IndiGo, it was considered the weakest and the least likely to survive the pandemic. But chairman and managing director Ajay Singh surprised everyone by not only surviving but taking the lead on many fronts. Within a few weeks of the scheduled flight stoppage, SpiceJet was doing as many charter flights as it could get hold of.
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The move comes days after SpiceJet raises its ticket cancellation charges.
IndiGo, Vistara, Air India, SpiceJet have cancelled their flights, while GoAir and AirAsia India announced waiving date change/ cancellation fee.
Despite partial restoration of salaries, pilots across airlines remain dissatisfied, throwing challenges for managers.
Air India offers huge discount on tickets.
With the launch of Tata AirAsia and Tata-SIA, the added capacity will bring down fares considerably, say observers.
Air India, SpiceJet, IndiGo and AirAsia India ready to fill in the gap.
In India, many players are in the throes of chaos and pain but at least one partnership -- Air Asia India -- that was fraying even before the pandemic now finds itself at breaking point, says Anjuli Bhargava.
Approval was held up due to CBI investigation into international flying permit of Tata group-owned AirAsia India.
AirAsia plans to sell 12 planes this year, a move that will bring in around 500 million ringgit ($156 million) in net profit.
The Indian government allowed foreign airlines to buy up to 49 per cent stakes in Indian carriers in September 2012.
Air Asia will hold 49 per cent and the remaining will be owned by Tata Sons and Telestra Tradeplace Pvt.
Besides the major metros, the proposed airline would also connect Srinagar, Patna, Chandigarh and Jammu.
While Air India and Jet Airways flights to Kathmandu were grounded at Indira Gandhi International Airport in New Delhi, no-frills airline AirAsia's Goa flight from Bengaluru also failed to take off on scheduled time due to similar reasons.
Among executives who have been approached are former president and CEO of IndiGo Aditya Ghosh, Wolfgang Prock Schauer, current president and Chief Operating Officer at IndiGo and Sanjay Kumar, Chief Strategy and Revenue Officer of IndiGo.
Indigo, Air India, Spicejet, GoAir, Jet Airways and Vistara put Diwakar Reddy under no fly list.
According to experts, the new entrant with its aggressive plans could give tough competition to Malaysia Airlines and AirAsia, two strong players in this sector.
Experts said the risks associated with the Indian Experts say that aviation sector would keep investors away from airline stocks.
About 170 Airbus aircraft operate in India.
Kamra allegedly heckled Goswami, the editor of Republic TV, on IndiGo's Mumbai-Lucknow (6E5317) flight on Tuesday.
IndiGo maintained its lead position with 49 per cent share of the domestic passenger market in May. SpiceJet's market share increased to 14.8 per cent in May, giving it the number two spot. The market share of Air India, GoAir, AirAsia and Vistara were 13.5 per cent, 11.1 per cent, 6.3 per cent and 4.7 per cent, respectively, in May this year.
Airbus is now confident of crossing 1,000 net orders (excluding cancellations or conversions from previous orders) in 2014.
The group began to outperform the broader market only with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 while earlier it was largely keeping pace with the Sensex. The group's market cap is up 164.4 per cent since the end of March 2020 against a 105 per cent rally in the Sensex.
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