Aviation watchdog DGCA has asked crisis-hit Go First to submit a comprehensive plan for the revival of its operations, a source said on Thursday. The budget carrier, which is undergoing a voluntary insolvency resolution process, stopped flying on May 3.
With airfares spiralling, members of a Parliamentary panel grilled top officials of the Civil Aviation Ministry and demanded quick action to curb overpricing of air tickets.
The pilot of Air India AI-915 Delhi-Dubai flight on February 27 allowed a woman friend to enter the cockpit, according to a complaint filed by a cabin crew member on the same flight.
Even in the domestic aviation scene, consolidation talks are on among some private airlines.
An additional 1,400 CISF personnel have been sanctioned to secure the expanding terminal areas of the Delhi airport and also to meet the challenge of its growing passenger traffic, officials said on Thursday.
India's aviation industry could return to profitability in 2023-24 for the first time since the pandemic. The industry may pare aggregated net loss by 75-80 per cent year-on-year (YoY) to between Rs 3,500 crore and Rs 4,500 crore in 2022-23 (FY23), compared with Rs 17,500 crore of net losses in 2021-22 (FY22). A combination of recovery in passenger volumes and easing cost pressures due to stable fuel and foreign exchange (forex) costs could spark a turnaround. CRISIL says domestic and international passenger traffic recovered to 90 per cent and 98 per cent, respectively, of pre-pandemic traffic (2019-20, or FY20), in April-December 2022, compared with April-December 2019.
He, however, cited the sensitivity of information due to the ongoing probe into the matter to decline to share more details, sources said.
Pilots might soon be asked not to use perfume, mouthwash and tooth gel as that may result in positive breath analyser test. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has sought comments on a draft Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR) wherein it has also proposed barring crew from using any "drug/formulation or use any substance such as mouthwash/tooth gel/perfume or any such product which has alcoholic content". Comments have been sought on the CAR, which pertains to procedure for medical examination of aircraft personnel for alcohol consumption, till October 5.
'The airport's name 'Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, Ayodhyadham' pays homage to Maharishi Valmiki, the sage attributed to composing the epic Ramayana, adding a cultural touch to the airport's identity.'
Mumbai airport, which has limited capacity for expansion, is being expanded to handle 40 million passengers annually by 2010.
Citing various aspects, the forum has appealed to the DGCA to "withdraw the harsh punishment and suspension of the PIC". it said.
Airline systems across airports, which were impacted due to a global IT outage on Friday, have started working normally, and all issues are likely to be resolved by noon on Saturday, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said. The ministry is constantly monitoring the operations at airports and airlines to ensure travel readjustments and refunds are taken care of, he added.
Limits and high taxes on FDIs have led to lesser investments in the Indian aviation sector.
Shiv Sena-Uddhav Balasaheb Thackeray leader Priyanka Chaturvedi on Wednesday took potshots at the rival Shiv Sena over its minister not finding a place in the reconstituted NITI Aayog.
The sources said the aircraft was allotted a remote bay C-33 instead of a Contact Stand, an aircraft parking stand that is suitable for walking passengers to and from an aircraft from an allocated boarding gate. This further added to passenger woes and deprived them the opportunity to avail basic facilities like rest rooms and refreshments at the terminal, they added.
The expansion of existing airports and development of new airports will continue expeditiously, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Thursday and emphasised that the country's aviation sector has been galvanised in the past 10 years.
India is the third-largest domestic airline market in the world, up from number five position a decade ago, according to analysis based on OAG data. The data shows India's domestic airline capacity doubling in a decade from 7.9 million in April 2014 to 15.5 million in April 2024. In reaching the third slot, India has replaced Brazil (pushed to fourth place with 9.7 million) and Indonesia (relegated to fifth in the rankings with 9.2 million).
Says banks strong enough to tackle the problem on their own
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday suspended operations at Redbird Flight Training Academy, one of India's largest flight schools, across all five of its training bases in the country. This action was taken after five accidents involving the institute's planes in the past six months. The DGCA announced it would conduct an audit of the academy's maintenance practices and also proficiency checks of the institute's flight instructors before allowing it to resume operations.
Meeting on Tuesday to decide on letting foreign airlines buy into domestic ones.
Indian airports have been at a disadvantage because of high taxes, cumbersome visa and foreign exchange norms, losing out to peers in the Gulf.
Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel on Wednesday said the modernisation and restructuring of major airports has started with Delhi and Mumbai airports.
The prevalent practice is that airlines have to pay between Rs 4,000 and Rs 4,500 per filled seat as departure tax.
Aircraft maker Airbus on Thursday announced awarding a contract to Indian company Dynamatic Technologies for manufacturing all the doors for its next-generation narrow body A220 planes, giving a boost to the 'Make in India' initiative. While financial details were not disclosed, Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said it is one of the single-largest export contracts for an Indian aerospace manufacturing company and emphasised that the country is becoming a destination for aircraft component manufacturing activities.
The missing plane could possibly be located on Monday after Nepal Telecom tracked down the cellphone of the airplane's pilot Captain Prabhakar Ghimire through the Global Positioning System network.
The planes had come on the same runway during take-off from the airport. The DGCA has asked UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) to share its investigation report on this incident.
No major relief for airlines from the Budget.
We've witnessed the first phase of the mess in the country's public sector-driven aviation sector. In the absence of properly-thought-out rules, the next, a privately-driven one, awaits us.
Scheduled international flights have been suspended in India since March 23 last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The incident came to the notice of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) only on January 4 and the latest actions are for violations of various norms.
In the past few days, more than 40 flights operated by the Indian carriers have received bomb threats which later turned out to be hoaxes.
An airline official said there were 292 passengers, including 8 infants onboard the plane.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) suspended the licences of 92 pilots in 2022 for violating safety norms, which was more than double the 2021 figure. The number of scheduled flights (domestic and international) in India increased by 32.74 per cent to 1.3 million in 2022, according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium. A DGCA official stated that the minimum period of licence suspension in 2022 was one month and the maximum was three years.
India and the European Union on Monday decided to extend an agreement to continue cooperation in the civil aviation sector, especially in safety, security and air traffic management for two more years.
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.
In the short video clip, other crew members could be seen shouting at the passenger after he hit the pilot.
Deploying additional Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel, providing real-time updates through social media, adding more immigration counters and ensuring 100 per cent manning of immigration counters - these are some of the steps that the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) is now taking in coordination with other stakeholders to avoid congestion at major airports during the upcoming festival season. During the last year's festival and winter season, major airports in the country suffered from congestion due to lack of sufficient airport infrastructure, inadequate X-ray screening machines, bunching of flights at peak hours, as well as inadequate CISF and immigration personnel, the MoCA stated on Thursday. Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia, after last year's congestion issue, had asked major airports - including Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Chennai - to identify bottlenecks and augment capacity to meet the growing passenger demand.
Airports across the country witnessed chaotic scenes on Friday after dozens of flights were either delayed or cancelled after a widespread global computer outage that also hit operations like cash withdrawal at some banks, and impacted functioning of some brokerages. Globally, the Microsoft cloud outage led to US airlines cancelling flights, but the tech giant later reportedly said its cloud services outage in the Central US region has been resolved.
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