Two issues dog the sale of the national carrier. One is the $2 billion bank guarantee the winning bidder will need to furnish. The other is the nearly 5000 lawsuits filed against Air India, many of them overseas. Anjuli Bhargava reports.
Air India would add about 400 daily flights and over 40 new destinations in India to the 27-member Alliance network of over 18,500 daily flights to 1,316 airports in 195 countries.
'With a less than comely bride and no dowry to speak of, the prospects of landing a good match look bleak, a grim, sinister and no-nonsense prospective father-in-law notwithstanding,' says Anjuli Bhargava.
Falling jet fuel prices and a revival in domestic traffic growth offer the new CMD a once in a lifetime opportunity.
The victim, R Sukumar said that the MP should be punished so that they should not take it as their birthright to assault a person.
Last year, Air India replaced veg and non-veg sandwiches with veg hot meals on flights
The board meeting of the state-owned airlines was also attended by Arvind Jadhav, for the first time since he took over as Nacil CMD after the sudden exit of erstwhile chairman Raghu Menon from the company. However, sources in the company said no final decision could be taken as the issue would be discussed with the new government and the civil aviation ministry.
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.
'It is not as bad an airline as it is made out to be: We serve wonderful food, the leg space is more, our cabin crew is warm and friendly.' 'The customer needs to be apprised of these things.'
Air India needs to up the ante in order to compete with rival carriers.
The slippage in the delivery schedule for the LCA Mk-1A variant of the jet had become a major issue with Chief of Air Staff Air Chief Marshal A P Singh raising the matter publicly.
Gaikwad was travelling from Pune to New Delhi when the scuffle broke out over the sitting arrangement.
As Kashmir valley remains under flood water, Air India has decided to ferry free of cost tourists trapped in Srinagar while Gujarat and Bihar governments are sending 75,000 food and dry food packets for affected people.
"Unless he tenders an unconditional apology to AI employees, and undertakes in writing to abide by the Chicago and Tokyo Conventions & Rules of the Air and follow all cabin safety and public behaviour norms, we must not let him on board," says the letter.
'Our production capacity ramp-up initiatives are expected to meet the critical requirements of our armed forces.'
AI also working on proposal to trim pilots' pay 15-20%
The CMD's focus on raising employee morale and cutting costs is paying off. The airline's operating losses have shrunk and earnings are looking up
Pusapati was given detailed presentations on various aspects of the sector by senior officials of the Ministry.
The flight connecting the Silicon Valley and the Silicon City is expected to benefit software professionals traveling to the Silicon Valley.
Air India has decided to set up an aircraft maintenance, repair and overhauling facility centre in Thiruvanathapuram, V Thulasidas, CMD, Air India said on Monday.
The letter was sent as an early warning of what was then widely being perceived as a plunder of national resources.
"I recently flew on one of our aircraft and I was pleasantly surprised. Our aeroplanes are brand new and a pleasure to travel on. They can give any airline a run for their money," says Raghu Menon.
'The Indian gung-ho leadership may like to think about it, there should never ever be a doubt in anyone's mind, friend or foe, that Pakistan's operationally ready nuclear capability enables every Pakistani leader the liberty, the dignity and the courage to look straight into the Indian eye and never blink.'
Hindustan Aeronautics Limited on Wednesday handed over the first LCA Tejas twin-seater aircraft to the Indian Air Force.
Ending suspense over the appointment of Air-India MD, the government said on Friday that Sunil Arora, chairman and managing director of Indian Airlines would assume additional charge of the international airline.
State-run aerospace behemoth Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) on Thursday said it has received a Request for Proposal (RFP) from the Indian Air Force for basic trainer HTT-40.
The air hostess compared the executive with the Hollywood film maker charged with sexual misconduct by leading actresses.
A Boeing team of experts would be flying to India to assess the situation arising out of a series of faults in Air India's Dreamliner aircraft, even as the airline insisted that the aircraft is safe.
In one step forward, the Civil Aviation Ministry on Wednesday met for the first time to decide on allowing the Airbus A-380s to operate at some airports, years after some major foreign carriers sought the right to fly these superjumbos to India.
V Thulasidas, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service of Tripura cadre, on Monday, took over as the chairman and managing director of Air-India.
The panel, which is a sub-committee of the Air India board, was set up on Tuesday following which the executive pilots withdrew their five-day long agitation against slashing of their productivity-linked incentive and flying allowance by half.
Cash-strapped Air India is in the process of finalising appointments to three key managerial positions which would put an extra annual burden of about Rs 3.5 crore (Rs 350 million) annually, sources said.
Air India CMD Arvind Jadhav requested all executives in the level of general managers and above to voluntarily forego salaries and incentives for July as a gesture to ease the liquidity crunch faced by the airline, an Air India spokesperson told PTI. The airline is facing a possible industrial unrest with employees threatening agitation in case their June salary is not given by this month-end.
The announcement by Air India CMD Rohit Nandan came on a day when two of the airline's six Dreamliners resumed commercial operations and operated regular flights from Delhi to Bengaluru and Kolkata.
Air India CMD Vasudevan Thulasidas said the combined entity will have a change management consultant which will enable employees to be IT-savvy.
After Frankfurt, the airline may opt for Munich as its other base in Europe. "Air India would ideally want to have both Frankfurt and Munich as European hubs as the airline does not want to vacate Frankfurt and also wants to establish Munich as a hub for operations after network expansion plans come through," said an Air-India official close to the development, not wanting to be quoted.
The development comes four days ahead of the launch of a training programme for pilots to fly the Boeing 787 Dreamliners.
Air India Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav, has finally looked towards his employees for suggestions after trying many consultants in the past for reviving the debt-ridden state-run carrier.
While Air India employees are contributing a day's salary to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund, its pilots have offered to forego their allowances to operate to Dehradun.
The Sena also asked why the government was only talking about discipline while flying and not on the ground as well, and why the Centre does not threaten to dissolve a state assembly when there is even one incident of farmer suicide.
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