Wadia group-owned Go First will temporarily suspend flights on May 3 and 4 amid severe fund crunch, the airline's chief Kaushik Khona said on Tuesday.
The government has begun consultations on relaxing the eligibility criteria for allowing Indian carriers to fly abroad, Rajya Sabha was informed.
The airline proposes to use pilots to conduct airworthiness checks before flying.
In the season of aviation action, Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air has secured the crucial no-objection certificate (NoC) from the civil aviation ministry. It expects to start operations next summer. The airline will now have to apply for the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for operations permit. Aviation sector has been in the limelight with the Tata Group winning the Air India bid last week.
'Candidates will receive hands-on training in drone piloting, maintenance, data analysis, and regulatory compliance.'
Aviation consultancy CAPA on Thursday said allowing domestic airlines to take advance bookings from April 15 is "unfair" to consumers since a decision on lifting the nationwide lockdown is yet to be taken. During the lockdown period only special flights approved by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, medical evacuation flights and those carrying cargo, including medical equipment, to and from different parts of the country are operational.
The civil aviation ministry had last week suspended all flights between the European country and India from December 23 to December 31 as a mutated variant of the coronavirus was detected there.
Revealing that 70 per cent of incidents involving airplanes are due to pilot error and most are due to non-compliance of procedures which are "avoidable", Kanu Gohain, director general of DGCA, said the aviation regulatory body has stepped up measures to ensure strict compliance of operational procedures.
The Kalrock-Jalan consortium - new owners of Jet Airways - has got an assurance from around 30 airports that if the airline restarts operations, 170 pairs of slots can be made available. However, whether those slots will be according to the airline's demand will depend on the order of the insolvency court, which is slated to come next week. Sources said the new management feels it is extremely important that some of those slots are restored or else its business plan of operating Jet as a premium carrier will not be viable.
'If a drone can't fly airspace without the DGCA knowing about it, how did such a big plane get airborne?' 'The DGCA knows this aircraft had undergone major repairs. Now, the question is who allowed it.' 'The DGCA cannot come out of this.'
Aviation regulator DGCA has allowed IndiGo to wet lease wide-body Boeing planes from Turkish Airlines for up to six months and has rejected the domestic carrier's request for leasing the aircraft for up to two years, according to sources. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) turned down the request of the country's largest airline to wet lease the aircraft for a longer period, citing that the move could become diversion of traffic rights in collusion with a strong foreign carrier that will mainly feed the latter's hub abroad with more passengers from India, the sources said. IndiGo, which currently has only narrow-body planes in its fleet, decided to lease wide-body aircraft to operate more flights on international routes to meet rising demand.
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.
The airline management has now sought a meeting with civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju to present the airline's plan.
A day after the Faridabad air crash that claimed 10 lives, the government On Thursday created an independent panel to probe major aviation accidents, separating the role of a regulator and an investigator which was being performed by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation alone so far.
The FAA's International Aviation Safety Assessment team revisited India to confirm and validate the action taken on earlier concerns since an audit in March 2009.
The aviation regulator is investigating the incidents and both planes, with Pratt and Whitney engines, will fly only when cleared by it, the officials said.
Earlier this month, Air India issued show cause notices to the Pilot-in-Command and four crew members of the flight and derostered them pending investigation.
DGCA's move seeks to ban perfumes for pilots as they have alcohol and can affect the results of breathanalyser tests. But the FAA and EASA have different standards, says senior journalist Shobha John.
The ministry of civil aviation has recommended three levels of unruly behaviour by passengers, each with a different duration of ban on flying.
Civil Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia on Tuesday flew on SpiceJet's special flight between Delhi and Gwalior using Boeing's 737 Max plane that has been allowed to return to service after two and half years. All Max planes were grounded in India by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on March 13, 2019, three days after the crash of an Ethiopian Airlines 737 Max plane near Addis Ababa, which had left 157 people, including four Indians, dead. Along with Scindia, SpiceJet CMD Ajay Singh and Boeing India president Salil Gupte were also present on the special flight on Tuesday.
The aviation regulator DGCA had on May 21 issued seven bands of ticket pricing with lower and upper fare limits.
Recently, there have been technical mishaps, including an electrical fire and a brake problem, involving the aircraft.
A number of countries like Canada, Turkey, Belgium, Italy and Israel have banned flights from the UK as the British government warned that the potent new strain of the virus was "out of control" and imposed a stringent new stay-at-home lockdown from Sunday.
The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) could once again allow domestic airlines to charge passengers for on-board services like preferential seats and drinking water.
Regulator said that no permit will be given until it submits a revival plan.
In India currently, Air India, Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite are members of the IOSA and conform to the safety standards set by this audit on a regular basis.
Airline stocks have been soaring following a steep decline in crude oil prices and sustained passenger traffic. Analysts have particularly turned bullish on the stocks of InterGlobe Aviation and SpiceJet. On December 20, shares of InterGlobe Aviation (IndiGo) hit a record high of Rs 3,009 on the BSE, having surged 43.24 per cent year-to-date (YTD).
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation has reportedly ordered a probe into the incident, which took place on Wednesday afternoon.
In his order last week, Civil Aviation Secretary K N Srivastava ruled the meanings of transaction fee, commission or convenience fee were the same -- payment of remuneration to an intermediary.
'DGCA cares a damn for human life.'
International Lease Finance said on Monday it had removed one of six aircraft stranded in India by the dispute over the suspension of operations at Kingfisher Airlines. This decision comes after the DGCA's meeting with Airports Authority of India and the civil aviation ministry.
The FIA termed as 'illegal' the clearances granted to the airline by the Finance Ministry and the Foreign Investment Promotion Board and called the grant of Air Operator's Permit or the flying licence to it 'fraudulent'.
The recent spate of technical glitches in aircraft has prompted the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to issue an order on July 18, making aircraft maintenance engineers (AMEs) with category B1/B2 licences the final authorities in certifying planes. This has put the spotlight on the availability of such personnel. According to the order, airlines were resorting to frequent one-off authorisation by the Category A certifying staff at transit stations, which is not in line with existing regulatory provisions.
However, the government did not expect the low fares to breach the lowest fare bucket given by the airlines to aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
Air India would start inspecting its six Boeing 787 Dreamliners from Tuesday.
Kingfisher chief executive officer Sanjay Agarwal met Director General of Civil Aviation Arun Mishra in New Delhi for 45 minutes to apprise him of the prevailing scenario facing the airline, but sources said he gave no information about any commitment by the airline's parent company, UB Group, on financing the revival plan.
As of now, there have been no problems with the aircraft.
Aviation watchdog DGCA will conduct a special audit of grounded airline Go First's facilities in the national capital and Mumbai from July 4 to 6 before approving the revival plan for resumption of flights, according to a senior official. Cash-strapped Go First stopped flying on May 3 and is undergoing a voluntary insolvency resolution process. Meanwhile, a senior executive at the airline expressed hope of resuming ticket sales -- which was paused by DGCA following the grounding of the carrier -- from July 7 or July 8 and subsequent relaunch of the operations from middle of next month.
The beleaguered carrier has submitted a revival plan to DGCA, which has asked for more details regarding how it would fund the plan given the precarious financial situation the company is in.
Indian airlines have also been advised separately to give relief, an official said.
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