After more than two decades and three attempts, the government has finally sold its flagship national carrier Air India, and it is deja vu for Maharaja as it returned home to its founding father the Tata group. Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy (JRD) Tata founded the airline in 1932 and named it Tata Airlines. In 1946, the aviation division of Tata Sons was listed as Air India, and in 1948, the Air India International was launched with flights to Europe. The international service was among the first public-private partnerships in India, with the government holding 49 per cent, the Tatas keeping 25 per cent and the public owning the rest. In 1953, Air India was nationalised and for the next over four decades it remained the prized possession for India controlling the majority of the domestic airspace.
Passengers holding confirmed RT tickets on Jet Airways will be allowed to avail special stranded passenger fares from the destinations common with Air India.
The amount of money lying unclaimed with the Life Insurance Corporation of India dwarfs the budgets of many ministries. There was Rs 21,539.5 crore which lay unclaimed with India's largest insurance company, according to details in the initial public offer (IPO) document it filed over the weekend. The regulatory documentation is ahead of LIC selling shares to the public through the stock exchange for the first time this financial year. This will be India's largest ever public listing.
Jet's staff strength stands whittled down to around 4,000, with many former employees having joined airlines in India and abroad.
A day after the first Ebola case was reported in India, Health Minister J P Nadda on Wednesday said arrangements similar to the one at Delhi airport, which helped detect the virus in a man returning from Liberia, have been put in place at 24 airports and stressed the situation was under "complete control".
Briefing reporters on her visit, state Finance Minister Amit Mitra said the Singapore Foreign Minister K Shanmugam has invited Banerjee to improve relations and she has accepted it.
His tenure will end in December this year.
Amid growing concerns over the spurt in COVID-19 cases in China and some other countries, Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya said the focus is to ensure that no unknown variant of the virus enters India and at the same time there is no impediment to travelling.
The US has ordered Tata-group owned Air India to pay a whopping $121.5 million as refunds and $1.4 million as penalties for extreme delays in providing refunds to passengers due to the cancellation or change in flights, mostly during the pandemic, officials said. Air India is among the six airlines that have agreed to cough up a total of over $600 million as refunds, the US Department of Transportation said on Monday. Air India's policy of "refund on request" is contrary to the Department of Transportation policy, which mandates air carriers to legally refund tickets in the case of cancellation or change in flight, officials said.
Initial reports say the pilots had asked for a change in route (it was flying to Singapore) because of adverse weather.
The DGCA is conducting special audit of all airlines and airports which are in monsoon-affected areas in the wake of multiple landing incidents across the country.
Meanwhile, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation has also ordered an engineering audit of the airline after the carrier is said to have found it difficult to provide equipment to operate some flights.
A meeting chaired by Cabinet Secretary Rajiv Gauba reviewed India's preparedness to deal with the virus amid mounting global concern over increasing number of cases in China and several other countries.
The flight sought an emergency landing after its pilot was informed about warning about the presence of a bomb in the cargo hold.
DGCA has also permitted the airline to deploy newly-inducted planes for capacity expansion.
Miscommunication with the ATC is said to have caused the near-miss. DGCA probe underway.
Even a rump Air India could not hope to get away with the shoddy service and scrappy fare for which I paid nearly two lakh, complains Sunanda K Datta-Ray.
The flight was scheduled to depart at 1.45 pm but due to the non-availability of the pilot it could take off only at 2.30 pm.
These could include strengthening the public-private partnership (PPP) dispute resolution mechanism, uniform PPP institutional framework, easier terms for infrastructure companies accessing bond markets, and tax sops, Business Standard has learnt. Investment in infrastructure projects with high multiplier effect has been the Centre's main plank to revive the economy, create employment and boost consumption.
The battery of the locator beacon of the flight data recorder of the doomed Malaysian plane MH370 had expired over a year before it mysteriously disappeared over the Indian Ocean, an interim report said on Sunday but did not indicate any unusual behaviour by the crew.
Full list of the rejigged Union Council of Ministers
During this 24-hour "lock-in period", passengers would be able to make correction in name or amend the travel date free of cost
"For the Lok Sabha elections, we are making meticulous planning on all fronts including electronic voting machines (EVMs) and the voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT)," he said.
Bracing to deal with Ebola epidemic which has claimed more than 4000 lives globally, the government took stock of the measures being undertaken for strengthening the preparedness, surveillance and response system in states.
Fifteen Cabinet ministers and 28 Ministers of State were sworn-in by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Wednesday evening.
"When the A320 plane, which did not have any passengers as it was heading to Moscow to bring back stranded Indians under Vande Bharat Mission, had reached Uzbekistan's airspace, our team on ground realised that one of the pilots had tested COVID-positive," senior Air India officials said.
After a gap of two months, domestic passenger flight operations resumed on Monday amid reluctance by various states to open up their airports in view of rising cases of the novel coronavirus.
The ministry of corporate affairs has raised questions on Etihad's rights to nominate three directors on the board and, despite being a minority shareholder in the company, decide on the vice-chairman.
"This is a film and films often take liberties with actual events, facts. This particular film has also taken artistic liberties in the depiction of the events as it actually happened in Kuwait in 1990," MEA spokesperson Vikas Swarup said.
Multinational search teams were racing against time to locate the black box of the crashed airliner, as Malaysia revised the account of the critical final communication received from the jet.
Besides lining up Bali, Nairobi and Toronto flights, the airline is also planning flights from Mumbai to Hong Kong. The network expansion will help the national carrier grow its market share and capitalise on the capacity vaccum created by the collapse of Jet Airways.
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As per the FIPB agenda, the proposal will be taken up on October 18.
Foreign direct investment (FDI) in India has declined by six per cent to $5.47 billion during January-March quarter of the current calender year even as government is making efforts to promote the country as an investment destination.
French aviation watchdog BEA said vertical separation between the two aircraft 'was zero feet' while the least horizontal separation between the two planes was reduced to just 0.6 NM.
The appointments committee of the Cabinet headed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi cleared Bhalla's appointment as OSD in the ministry with immediate effect.
Tamil Nadu, Telangana and West Bengal reported their first COVID-19 variant Omicron cases on Wednesday, four more persons each tested positive in Maharashtra and Kerala.
The initiative is being called lateral recruitment to senior positions in the government.
Over two lakh posts are estimated to be created by the Central government in its various departments.
The 17 related ministries have been combined into seven different groups, including some infrastructure departments, in a bid to ensure synergy and better results.
Wreckage washed up on a remote Indian Ocean island is "very likely from a Boeing 777", Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said on Thursday as speculation mounted it could be from MH370 that vanished mysteriously over a year ago with 239 people, including five Indians, on board.
