In a message to flyers, the Air India chief also said the 15 percent reduction in Air India's international wide-body fleet operations for the next few weeks is a temporary move.
An Arunachal Pradesh woman was allegedly detained at Shanghai airport for nearly 18 hours after Chinese immigration officials refused to recognise her Indian passport, claiming Arunachal Pradesh is part of China.
The airspace ban was extended after ties between the two countries deteriorated due to the four-day conflict as India launched Operation Sindoor on May 7 and destroyed terror infrastructure in territories controlled by Pakistan.
The Indian stock market in the October-November period sees high trading activity due to increased consumer spending, festive demand, upbeat sentiment, renewed investor confidence, and the auspicious Muhurat trading session. This impacts many stocks and sectors in the festive season.
The flight was delayed post midnight because of a "technical glitch" and passengers remained seated inside all the while, an aggrieved traveller said in a video that has gone viral on social media.
An Air India passenger allegedly urinated on a fellow traveller during a flight from Delhi to Bangkok on Wednesday. Air India has reported the incident to the authorities (DGCA) and is investigating the matter. The airline has also stated that its crew followed all laid down procedures in handling the situation and offered assistance to the aggrieved passenger.
Lightning claims more lives in India annually than any other extreme weather event. Between April and July this year alone, 1,621 people died due to lightning strikes.
'The overall well-being of the pilots should be at the top of any airline's agenda in such situations.'
There were also seven Portuguese nationals and one Canadian on board the Air India flight that crashed in Ahmedabad.
Air India Chairman N Chandrasekaran on Thursday said the airlines is doing everything to assist the emergency response teams at the plane crash site and will provide all necessary support to those impacted by the mishap.
Over the past eight months, a team of 80 people has been diligently working to harmonise operating procedures across four airlines run by the Tata group, as part of two mergers, revealed Campbell Wilson, Air India's chief executive officer (CEO), on Friday. The Tata group is consolidating its aviation business by merging four airlines into two: Air India and Vistara are merging to form a single full-service carrier, while AIX Connect and Air India Express are combining to create a unified low-cost carrier (as a subsidiary of Air India).
Air India on Friday announced that several of its international flights were either diverted or sent back to their origin due to the emerging situation in Iran and the closure of its airspace.
A Delhi-bound Air India flight returned to Phuket following a security alert on Friday, an airline official said.
The Tata-owned airlines said that 169 Indians, 53 British, 1 Canadian and 7 Portuguese were on board the Boeing 787-8 aircraft.
Though India's airlines are certainly bleeding, they haven't yet faced the ignominy of shutting down.
Indian airports' push to become global hubs will depend on reducing passenger leakage to rival airports abroad, scaling up direct long-haul connectivity, and offering transfer experiences that are faster, smoother, and more attractive than those of regional competitors, said panellists at the Business Standard Infrastructure Summit on Thursday.
Competition is intense and with the blurring of differences in service proposition and fares, it becomes imperative that airlines use their on-time performance for messaging and brand building.
'Within five years, we should be achieving more on the international front than what it took most airlines 15 to 20 years back.'
The Noida International Airport (NIA), being developed as a greenfield aviation hub in Jewar, Gautam Buddh Nagar, is on track to begin operations by the end of this year.
This move comes as a precautionary measure, in light of airspace restrictions and heightened security.
The announcements were made after a meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif to formulate the country's response to India's move to suspend the Indus Water Treaty and downgrade diplomatic ties after the Pahalgam terror attack.
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).
Air India has been issued nine show cause notices for safety violations in the last six months, according to the civil aviation ministry. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has taken enforcement action on one violation. This follows a fatal accident involving an Air India Boeing 787-8 aircraft.
Of these, as many as seven are Level-1 violations, which are considered critical safety risks and require immediate corrective action by the air operator, they said.
Air India will begin operating flights between Ahmedabad and London Heathrow from August 1, replacing the Gatwick route. The airline is also partially resuming domestic and international services suspended after a fatal plane crash. Some routes will remain suspended until September 30, while others will see increased frequency.
The move follows the recent probe report by the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) that highlighted safety concerns involving Boeing 737 aircraft equipped with Collins Aerospace SVO-730 Rudder Rollout Guidance Actuators.
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.
Consider this: despite a traffic of over 130 million passengers flying international-to-international (I2I) routes per annum over India, only one-sixth of the long-haul traffic (26 million) emanates from the country.
Life of air passengers was different in the 1970s.
Developing relations with the Taliban is needed, but plunging headlong into Afghanistan without due thought will be akin to the rooster entering a KFC outlet, warns Lieutenant General Prakash Katoch (Retd).
Akasa Air's standalone net loss rose 18.7 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) to roughly Rs 1,983 crore in 2024-25 (FY25), driven by rising employee costs, aircraft maintenance and airport charges, and a sharp increase in foreign exchange (forex) expenses, sources privy to the development told Business Standard.
The DGCA has asked airlines to inspect the fuel switch locking system in their Boeing 787 and 737 planes after a preliminary probe report into the Air India crash found that the switches were cut off before the accident.
IndiGo has delivered impressive operating performance in the past six quarters as it navigated cost and capacity challenges. It has managed to mitigate the impact of faulty engine-related groundings. The airline has also managed costs related to grounding, expensive secondary leasing, increasing airport charges, and pilot compensation inflation and delivered stronger yields and spreads.
Aircraft supply to airlines will remain constrained during the next four to five years due to the supply chain issues being faced by plane makers Airbus and Boeing and there is not much that carriers can do beyond optimising their flight network expansion, Air India CEO and MD Campbell Wilson said on Tuesday.
Names and names and names and names... 329 in all. Some Indian. Some Canadian. Some British. Berry. Gupta. Jain. James. Bhatt. Beauchesne. Chatlani. Enayati. Lougheed.... Vaihayasi Pande Daniel visits Ahakista, Ireland, home to the memorial for the worst terrorist atrocity in India's history.
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.
This is an increase from a Boeing forecast last year of 1,450 new airplanes worth $175 billion.
Civil Aviation Secretary Vumlunmang Vualnam on Thursday said the number of planes with domestic airlines will increase to 1,400 in the next five years as he highlighted the growth potential of the country's aviation space. Currently, the fleet is around 800 aircraft and leading carriers IndiGo and Air India have placed significant plane orders.
Neither anyone from the airline (Air India), nor from the government has contacted them so far, he said.
Aviation regulator DGCA plans to implement measures to control excessive air ticket price increases, following concerns raised during a parliamentary panel meeting. The meeting also addressed air safety issues in light of the Ahmedabad plane crash.
