Air India on Monday said it will lease 12 more aircraft comprising both A320 neo and Boeing 777, which are expected to be inducted in its existing fleet in the first half of 2023. The new planes will be deployed on the airline's short, medium and long-haul international routes, Air India said in a statement. Air India said it has leased 42 aircraft since its privatisation in January this year.
'The future is about autonomy and tanking.'
New airline Akasa Air on Thursday took delivery of the first 737 Max aircraft from Boeing in Seattle, USA, a statement said.
For the first time, the country's largest airline IndiGo will soon lease up to four wide-body Boeing 777 planes to cover the shortfall in its international operations, according to officials. The airline said the wet-leasing of "certain aircraft" will be done as an interim measure. IndiGo, which has so far only been operating narrow-body Airbus planes, ATRs and freighters, will now be having wide-body aircraft in its fleet.
Full service carrier Vistara will continue to expand and expects to have a total of 70 planes by mid-2024, its chief Vinod Kannan said on Tuesday. The airline, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, reported an operating profit for the first time since inception in the three months ended December 2022. By the middle of next year, Kannan said it will have a total of 70 aircraft, including 7 Boeing 787s.
Pilots working with Air India have warned of non-co-operation if restoration of pre-Covid overtime allowance is delayed, and if other practices they say are 'discriminatory' continues. "We cannot assure that our members will undertake flying duties exceeding 70 hours a month. Any coercive action by the management will lead to industrial action to safeguard flight safety and well-being of our members," the Indian Commercial Pilots Association and the Indian Pilots Guild said in a joint letter to Air India's management on Tuesday.
The order, valued at 'nearly $9 billion at list prices', was signed at Dubai Air Show 2021 on Tuesday.
The trails of mega-mergers, tailwinds of expanding fleets, flights and airports will dot the fast-growing Indian aviation firmament in 2025, though the dark clouds of supply chain woes will persist longer. Also, new airline takeoffs, the future trajectory of revised norms to tackle pilot fatigue and efforts to reduce carbon emissions will be on the radar.
'For the moment, we have barred these pilots from flying the Max and they have to retrain successfully for flying the aircraft,' DGCA chief Arun Kumar said in a statement.
In little over a year, Air India and IndiGo have announced plans to purchase up to 170 wide-body planes as they bet on ambitious expansion and efforts also continue to make India a global aviation hub. Also, the two carriers' orders usher in European aircraft maker Airbus into the country's wide-body space, which has traditionally been dominated by US major Boeing. If narrow-body aircraft orders of Air India, IndiGo and Akasa Air are added to the list, the order book is well over 1,200 planes and that too in less than 14 months or since February 2023.
It takes only two hours - roughly the time it takes for a plane to fly from Delhi to Mumbai - for a pair of pilots to complete their training on the 737 MAX simulator at Boeing's centre in Noida, the only one of its kind in India. Going by this estimate, all the 90 Spicejet pilots who the civil aviation regulator barred from flying the 737 MAX can be retrained in 90 hours.
Sunita added that "I hope, and I think for sure, I'm gonna be going back to my father's home country and visiting with people and getting excited about the first, or not the first, but the Indian national who's going up on the Axiom Mission coming up, pretty awesome," she said.
The airlines' CEO expects it have 50 Boeing-737s and 30 Bomardier aircraft by 2016
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.
Demand for the earlier variant 737NG planes is also expected to pick up due to the grounding of MAX planes.
SpiceJet had bet its fortunes heavily on the new version of the 737 of which it has 13 planes in its fleet and another 193 aircraft on order
The airline requires these pilots for the wide-body Boeing 777s.
Air India's entire European operations are carried out with Boeing Dreamliner planes.
'Indian aviation is having a lesser number of aircraft.' 'Besides the Boeing 737 MAX, you have the A320Neos which Indigo is currently grappling with because of a lack of pilots.' 'This has led to cancellation (of flights) and therefore the prices of air tickets are on the higher side this season although generally in March ticket prices are on the lower side.'
Boeing also won a $4.5-billion contract for 10 C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, and will soon start delivery of $3 billion contracts to supply 22 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and 15 CH-47F Chinook heavy lift helicopters., reports Ajai Shukla.
IndiGo has delivered impressive operating performance in the past six quarters as it navigated cost and capacity challenges. It has managed to mitigate the impact of faulty engine-related groundings. The airline has also managed costs related to grounding, expensive secondary leasing, increasing airport charges, and pilot compensation inflation and delivered stronger yields and spreads.
SpiceJet is the only Boeing 737 MAX operator in India, with 13 aircraft of the type in its fleet and a total of 205 planes on order.
Ethiopian Airlines became the world's first carrier to resume flying Boeing Co's 787 Dreamliner passenger jets, landing the first commercial flight since the global fleet was grounded three months ago.
The plane was scheduled to be delivered by aircraft manufacturer Boeing to Air India in July but its delivery was delayed twice --once in July for a few weeks due to COVID-19 pandemic and then in August for a few weeks due to technical reasons -- the officials noted.
Akasa Air on Tuesday said it has added the 20th aircraft to its fleet that also makes the airline eligible to start international operations. The carrier, which will complete one year of operations on August 7, has also become the first airline in Asia to have the Boeing 737-8-200 variant. According to a release, the Boeing 737-8-200 aircraft aligns with Akasa Air's continued efforts to control operating costs.
Though a formal purchase agreement with Boeing is yet to be signed, SpiceJet's order size could be of 40-50 planes, a source familiar with the development said. At list price, a 737 Max aircraft is valued at about $100 million (Rs 620 crore).
Boeing is pressing hard to win the Indian Navy contract for 57 aircraft carrier-borne fighters. It could offer the Super Hornet in the ongoing IAF procurement of 114 medium fighters; its upgraded F-15EX fighter also on the list.
The airline will induct four more Dreamliners next year to complete order of 27 of these aircraft
Over the past six months, the airline's fleet has shrunk from 58 aircraft to 48 planes with the carrier returning 10 Boeing 737s to lessors.
Of 1,400 pilots the airline has, 200 have quit in the past few months because of salary delays.
Low-cost carrier SpiceJet Ltd on Friday said it expects to resolve settlement disputes with its lessors shortly.
The Boeing website lists the price of a Boeing 737-800 aircraft at $90.5 million.
About 350 Boeing 737 Max 8 are currently in service with airlines around the world, with thousands more on order. Boeing insists it has no reason to pull the popular aircraft from the skies.
SpiceJet has cut the size of its fleet to 22-24 Boeing planes from 35 and will keep it this way for few months.
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed new airline Akasa is in talks with US aerospace company Boeing for buying up to 100 737 Max aircraft. Former Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube and his family members are promoters while ex-IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh is a board member of the airline. The airline is in negotiation with Boeing and has reached out to the government to recertify the aircraft which has been grounded since 2018 after two crashes killing 349 persons, according to sources in the know.
Delhi-based budget carrier SpiceJet will acquire 10 new Boeing 737 airplanes as a part of its fleet expansion programme.
With full-service carrier Jet Airways and budget airline SpiceJet operating 737 MAX planes, the DGCA has decided to seek information about the aircraft from Boeing as well as the two domestic carriers in view of the air crash in Ethiopia.
Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh inaugurated the 5-day long event.
About 350 Boeing 737 Max 8 are currently in service with airlines around the world, with thousands more on order. Boeing insists it has no reason to pull the popular aircraft from the skies.
'Boeing has returned some cash to the airline which will help it improve the current liquidity crisis.'
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