Tata Group-owned AirAsia India, which is in the process of being merged with Air India Express, has taken short-term loans worth Rs 630 crore during the last six months to deal with cash crunch. AirAsia India has been making losses since its first commercial flight on June 12, 2014. Its net loss increased by 42 per cent to Rs 2,178 crore in FY22.
DGCA said there are 13 aircraft in the airline's fleet in which both the PW engines have been used for more than 3,000 hours.
DGCA has also permitted the airline to deploy newly-inducted planes for capacity expansion.
In a circular, the DGCA stated, "Universal screening of all the passengers coming in flights directly from Japan, South Korea, Thailand and Singapore besides the flights from China and Hong Kong shall be ensured immediately once they step out of the specific identified aerobridge."
The aviation regulator DGCA had on May 21 issued seven bands of ticket pricing with lower and upper fare limits.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (which represents all EU countries) has also raised the red flag on the issue.
The ministry and the civil aviation regulator have said the government will consider the airline's request for slots as per existing policy.
SpiceJet announced it has started a five-day "1+1 offer sale" where it was offering one-way base fares starting as low as Rs 899, excluding taxes, on its domestic network.
IndiGo had the best on-time performance (OTP) of 95.4 per cent at four metro airports in February, while Go First secured the number two position with 94.1 per cent in the same month, according to data released by aviation regulator DGCA. Bengaluru, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Mumbai were the four airports where Indigo had the best OTP, the data released on Monday said. In January, the situation was inverse as Go First had logged the best OTP of 94.5 per cent at the four airports while IndiGo was at number two with 93.9 per cent OTP.
Airlines say they have accepted the directive, though many feel this would give away competitive information on the number of seats at each price point, which could have an adverse impact on business.
Sources said the process has taken time because of a delay in leasing of aircraft. As per the original plan the aircraft were to be leased through GIFT City, Gujarat, but this is proving costlier than doing it offshore.
A police team has been set up by the Kerala government to ascertain the truth behind the hijack alarm in the Abu Dhabi-Kochi Air India flight on Friday. A team of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation officials is set to arrive in Thiruvananthapuram to probe the case.
'People have been flying for years on the basis of a police clearance and an airport entry pass.' 'Then they came out with a convoluted thing -- that your police clearance must be from your place of residence.' 'Now if a pilot is sitting in Delhi but is from Timbuktoo, the papers will have to come from there.' 'So at any point, you have a certain number of pilots sitting on the ground because his AEP has expired and the papers haven't come.' Revealed: India's bizarre processes to get pilots to fly planes.
As part of the exercise, preventive checks at different airport functions have been carried out and the airport has ensured that diesel generator sets are in place to provide uninterrupted power supply, the MIAL said in a release.
Due to the coronavirus pandemic, in-flight meal service was not permitted on domestic flights since their resumption on May 25. On international flights, only pre-packed cold meals and snacks were being served depending on the flight duration since May this year.
This is at least the ninth incident of technical malfunction on a SpiceJet aircraft in the last 40 days.
The move comes after the civil aviation ministry decided to allow Indian carriers to charge passengers for add-on services like their foreign counterparts.
Sunil Bhaskaran, AirAsia India's chief executive officer (CEO) and managing director (MD), is the front-runner to head the low-cost carrier that will take birth after the merger of Air India Express and AirAsia India, sources said. In a show of confidence, the airline's board extended Bhaskaran's tenure by three years -- until March 2025 -- in a meeting held earlier this year, according to the documents reviewed by Business Standard. Moreover, AirAsia India's board of directors has increased Bhaskaran's salary twice in 2022 -- first in January by 5 per cent and then in June by 7 per cent, the documents showed.
'We should have calmed down the child. We will do an internal analysis on that.'
Aviation minister said if the scheduled domestic flights reach pre-COVID levels by the end of the year, he will have no hesitation in removing the fare limits at that time.
FAA, in audits in September and December, downgraded India to Category-II in safety rankings, clubbing it with Zimbabwe and Indonesia.
The aviation regulator DGCA said on Friday that it was extending the suspension of scheduled international passenger flights in the country till July 31 but added that some international scheduled services on selected routes may be permitted on a case to case basis. Scheduled international passenger flights were suspended in India on March 23 due to the coronavirus pandemic.
'We are going to have plane crashes left, right and centre.'
Anjuli Bhargava finds out that an astonishing number of relatives of DGCA officials over the years are and have been employed in the airline industry.
Arun Mishra takes over as Director General of Civil Aviation at a time when questions are being raised on its leniency with airlines. Being also grossly understaffed, it faces an International Civil Aviation Organisation safety audit this December. The new DG talks about these and other issues.
The consortium of UAE-based businessman Murari Lal Jalan and UK-based private equity fund Kalrock Capital is rushing to restart Jet Airways' operations, even though differences have emerged over who will fund expenses before operations commence, sources said. The airline applied to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) for recertification of its air operator certificate in the last week of January. The regulator is likely to inspect the airline's preparedness to operate a flight in the middle of this month, after which it will be asked to operate a proving flight to demonstrate its ability to conduct flights safely and in accordance with rules.
The National Company Law Tribunal on Tuesday approved the Jalan-Kalrock Consortium's resolution plan for the bankrupt Jet Airways.
The petition said that acts of the Centre and DGCA were highly prejudicial to employees of the company who have been waiting to get paid for the last five months and have been looking forward to the resolution in bid process.
People in the know said the move would impact around 110 engines, virtually putting a spanner on the expansion plans of IndiGo - counted among the fastest growing airlines in the world.
Along with the pilots, 434 cabin crew too have evaded the mandatory breath analyser test, which is to be taken both before and after operating a flight
The SC observed that the government should be more worried about the health of citizens rather than the health of commercial airlines.
The two episodes on a single day have taken the total number of technical malfunction incidents involving SpiceJet aircraft to seven in the last 17 days.
New DGCA rules stipulate airlines have to apply for permit at least 90 days before launch
An official of the aviation regulator DGCA had said that the pilots aborted the take off after they were informed about a 'barrier' on the runway
Management and leadership changes, in addition to synchronising operations between all its airlines, are showing visible results for Air India. Data from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) show that there has been a marked improvement in key operational parameters of Air India after the Tata group took complete control of the national airline in January. One of the most dramatic improvements has been noticed in Air India's passenger load factor (PLF) - a crucial metric of capacity utilisation of an airline's fleet that shows how many seats it has been able to fill on every flight.
However, a passenger can carry such phones on board in switch off mode and in cabin baggage
The pilots and other senior staff have not been getting their full salaries since December.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation had suspended Kingfisher's SOP on October 19 till further orders after a lockout and its failure to come up with a viable plan of financial and operational revival.
While most of these commanders quit the airline for better prospects, some of them also parted ways due to the work culture
There is no reason for keeping an entire ministry with a total staff strength of 2,300, just for the oversight of a few aviation sector laws and regulatory bodies, notes A K Bhattacharya.
