Over four months ago the Foreign Investment Promotion Board cleared a proposal for the setting up of a new airline, AirAsia India, by Malaysian carrier AirAsia which has joined hands with the Tata Group and Arun Bhatia of Telestra TradePlace in a 49:30:21 joint venture partnership.
AirAsia's Rs 5 basic fare offer has triggered competition and criticism from rivals, with market leader IndiGo launching a Rs 1 basic fare on AirAsia's inaugural routes and SpiceJet Chief Operating Officer Sanjiv Kapoor questioning the silence of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on the price war.
This was good enough for Fernandes to hire Chandilya to lead his India business.
Ending its uncomfortable journey in India after eight years, Malaysia-based AirAsia Group on Wednesday said it has exited AirAsia India by selling its remaining 16.67 per cent stake to Tata Group-owned Air India for Rs 155.64 crore. Later in the day, Air India said it has begun the process of creating a single low-cost carrier subsidiary by merging AirAsia India and Air India Express. A working group consisting AirAsia India CEO Sunil Bhaskaran and Air India Express CEO Aloke Singh has been formed for the two carriers' integration, which is expected to take approximately 12 months, it added.
Last week, AirAsia launched a daily Airbus A-330 flight from Delhi to Kuala Lumpur at a basic fare of, hold your breadth, just Re 1 for two days.
The bookings under the offer, which commenced on Monday, can be made till March 2 and will go on till March 2 for the travel period from October 1 to April 30 next year, AirAsia said.
The multinational search for the missing AirAsia flight entered the third day on Tuesday after a futile day-long scanning of the JavaSea where the Airbus 320-200 is believed to have gone down with 162 passengers and crew.
There is good news for Malaysian travellers, as the low-cost carrier AirAsia is giving away a million free seats to more than 70 destinations in China, India, Taiwan, Indonesia and Thailand.
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.
The tickets will be available on the airline's site and will remain open on August 7 and 8. The cost of a ticket on Delhi-Kuala Lumpur sector wilh surcharge will be Rs 476.
The controversial 5/20 rule required an airline to have five years of domestic operations and 20 aircraft in its fleet to be able to fly abroad.
The proposal was cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Amid reports of sighting of more debris by a Russian search team, divers on Tuesday recovered two more bodies from choppy waters in the JavaSea, though there was still no trace of the crucial black box of the crashed AirAsia aircraft that crashed nine days ago.
AirAsia, which is a joint venture between Tata Sons Ltd, TelestraTradeplace currently flies from Bengaluru to Chennai, Kochi, Goa and vice versa.
Rescuers hunting for the crashed AirAsia plane on Friday detected 'pings' believed to be from its crucial black box, a top Indonesian official said, raising hopes of unravelling the mystery of the deadly crash.
The first funeral for a victim of AirAsia Flight QZ8501 was held on Thursday, as officials vowed an 'all out effort' to recover the other passengers' bodies from the sea.
An AirAsia flight from Indonesia to Singapore with 162 people aboard reportedly went missing on Sunday morning after losing contact with air traffic controllers.
AirAsia recently said it would set up a 49:30:21 joint venture with the Tata Sons and Telestra Tradeplace of Indian investor Arun Bhatia to launch a new Indian airline.
Civil aviation ministry raises procedural issues in FIPB meeting.
The infusion will help the airlines plan their next rounds of operations as easing of 5/20 norms
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.
The first officer, not the captain, was flying AirAsia Flight 8501 when it crashed.
AirAsia India, whose top officials have promised to offer low and competitive airfares, will focus on connecting tier-II cities to begin with.
This is the third enforcement action against a Tata Group airline in over a month.
Mittu Chandilya wants to bring a new meaning to flying for Indians.
The company is looking at putting in one plane every month.
Rescuers on Sunday recovered another body and a fifth large object belonging to the doomed AirAsia jet in the JavaSea as they continued to scour the choppy waters for the eighth day.
AirAsia is expanding its distribution network and increasing its offline travel partners.
The reported buyback of Temasek's 20 per cent stake in Tata Play by Tata Sons will be the third instance of Tata Group providing an exit to a foreign partner in recent years. In 2018, Tata Sons paid $1.27 billion to DoCoMo to buy back 26 per cent of the group's telecommunication venture, Tata Teleservices. This was followed by Tata Sons acquiring AirAsia Berhad's 49 per cent stake in AirAsia India in two tranches to make it a wholly owned subsidiary.
AirAsia India, whose top officials have promised to offer low and competitive airfares, will focus on connecting tier-II cities.
Rescuers found 30 bodies with 5 of them still strapped to their seats as multi-national teams equipped with sophisticated equipment narrowed the search to a 5 sq km area of the choppy Java Sea where some debris of the ill-fated AirAsia jet have emerged.
The sister of Remi Plesel, the French co-pilot of the doomed AirAsia flight QZ8501, said that aviation was his passion.
After three days of intense search, debris of the missing AirAsia aircraft carrying 162 people was found on Tuesday in the Java Sea off Indonesia but only three bodies have been retrieved so far as the mystery remained over the cause of the crash.
Indian airlines will operate a total of 23,732 flights every week during the winter schedule, which is more than 8 per cent higher than the year-ago period, amid rising air traffic demand. The winter schedule 2023 -- effective from October 29 to March 30 next year -- for the scheduled carriers has been approved by aviation regulator DGCA. Go First, which stopped flying from May 3 and is undergoing an insolvency resolution process, will not be having any operations during the winter schedule.
Budget airline AIX Connect has removed its manager from duty at Bengaluru airport following the incident of a flight taking off without Karnataka Governor Thaawarchand Gehlot last week, a source said on Monday.
Navy divers on Monday resumed efforts to find more wreckage of the ill-fated AirAsia jet with no signal detected yet from the black box recorders, as rescue teams expanded search eastward to locate large objects of the plane believed to be on the ocean floor.
Divers on Thursday searched the sunken fuselage of the crashed AirAsia jet in the JavaSea to retrieve the missing bodies of the 162 people killed in the disaster, a day after the main wreck was located in the choppy waters after over two weeks of multi-national hunt.
An aviation website has evaluated AirAsia's potential network in India based on passenger market size, distance from Chennai and competition.
