'I am seven months into the job, but it feels like seven years.'
The Tata-SIA airline Vistara is gearing up to station an indigenously developed robot, RADA, at its signature lounge at Delhi airport's Terminal 3. Powered by AI, the robot is programmed to scan boarding passes, provide information on the terminal, departure gates, real-time flight status and weather conditions of destination city etc. And RADA can also entertain people by playing games and multimedia content, says Sangeeta Tanwar.
British Airways, Lufthansa, Etihad and Singapore Airlines are scouting for an Indian partner that meets the net worth criterion
In a move which could affect the Jet-Etihad deal or start-up carriers like Tata-SIA or AirAsia India, DGCA has made it clear that foreign airlines or investors would not have the right to control the management of an Indian carrier.
AirAsia says deal not violative of shareholder agreement.
They say it will have severe impact on their financial strength
The government was also working on a package to promote connectivity and airports in the North Eastern states
They say better late than never. For the Tatas, the original owners of Air India, bringing back the airline to its fold is worth the wait even if the attempt to privatise the bleeding national carrier by successive governments has taken over two decades. While many airlines have come and gone from the Indian skies since the time when the first move was made to privatise Air India to date, the salt-to-software conglomerate has never let the love affair with aviation, more so with Air India that its former chairman Jehangir Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata (JRD) had, to go off the radar. It is said that Tata group executives used to complain in private that JRD -- the pioneer of the Indian aviation industry -- spent more time worrying about Air India than the Tata group when he was heading both the entities.
Domestic airlines may increase foreign flight frequencies
Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara also operated all women crew flights, though on their domestic network.
Malik, who was travelling on Vistara's Mumbai-Delhi flight UK 902 on Tuesday when the incident happened, also complained to the airlines about "poor handling" of wheelchair-bound passengers by the airline staff.
The Air India Group has started vacating its offices, which are currently being operated from government-owned properties, from this month, as part of its strategy to consolidate workspaces across the country. The loss-making Air India and its international budget arm Air India Express were taken over by the Tata Group on January 27 this year, after successfully winning the bid for the airline on October 8, last year. Besides these two airlines, Tata Group also holds a majority 51 per cent stake in Vistara, its joint venture airline with Singapore Airlines (SIA), and a 83.67 per cent stake in budget carrier, AirAsia India.
Singapore Airlines is offering a scholarship for a two-year pre-university course in selected junior colleges in Singapore.
Mukesh Ambani-owned RIL's JioMart is set to launch a slew of new products including financial services, electronics to airline tickets to take on the competition from upcoming rivals like the Tata Super app and other established players including PayTM, Amazon and Flipkart. This comes at a time when RIL's e-commerce revenues are set to grow by 35 per cent to $15 billion within four years and its core retail revenue is expected to grow at the same pace to $44 billion, as per a forecast by Goldman Sachs. "The Tata vs JioMart war will be the next big corporate battle to watch. "While Tata has an upper hand like in-house products and brands, RIL has the backing of global biggies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft," said head of a rating firm asking not to be quoted.
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.
Engineers of the Indian Airlines threatened to launch an agitation against the proposed JV between IA and Singapore International Airlines for maintenance, repair and overhauling of aircraft, including those of foreign airlines in India.
An Airbus A-380 of the Singapore Airlines (SIA) on Friday took off from Singapore for Delhi, marking the maiden flight of the superjumbo to India.
The group began to outperform the broader market only with the onset of the pandemic in March 2020 while earlier it was largely keeping pace with the Sensex. The group's market cap is up 164.4 per cent since the end of March 2020 against a 105 per cent rally in the Sensex.
Tata's Vistara has a very strong core team to look into daily operations.
The new alliance will help the Tatas realise their long-cherished dream of flying abroad, while Singapore Airlines will get a foothold in the expanding Indian market
Vistara is keen to take to global skies.
Two aborted missions, three different ministers, multiple rule changes and two decades later, Indian taxpayers will no longer have to pay Rs 20 crore per day to keep the loss-making Air India flying. While opposition Congress expectedly attacked the decision as selling the family silver, DIPAM secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said what Tata is getting is not a cash cow but an airline which is bleeding where money needs to be pumped in to refurbish obsolete aircraft and dust up strangled ones while being unable to touch any employee for one year and only be able to resize staff after paying a VRS. "It won't be a very easy task there. Only advantage is they (new Air India owner) are paying the price which they think they can manage. "They are not taking the excessive debt accumulated to fund years of losses. We are continuing it as an ongoing concern.... This process has also saved huge amount of taxpayers money going forward," Pandey told PTI.
Air India said it has also written to the Shiv Sena communicating the decision to cancel the ticket. Shiv Sena Secretary Anil Desai said that he has asked Gaikwad to change his travel plans as the party doesn't want the tensions to escalate.
Tata-SIA will kick off with full-service domestic operations.
Singapore Airlines on Saturday said it would introduce 14 additional flights to India between December and February and also use larger aircraft on 59 scheduled services.
Sources say the arilines has inducted a senior pilot from IndiGo to head its safety team.
Domestic air passenger volume spiked 70.46 per cent in October to 89.85 lakh over the same month of 2020, DGCA data showed on Thursday. The Indian carriers had flown 52.71 lakh passengers in October last year. It may be recalled that domestic traffic along with international flight services remained shut for two months until May 25, 2020, when scheduled air services were resumed in a graded manner.
Following the entry of Tata-SIA and AirAsia into the Indian aviation market, the domestic aviation industry is seeing increased interest from private entities.
With the launch of Tata AirAsia and Tata-SIA, the added capacity will bring down fares considerably, say observers.
It will start its operations through an arrangement with Singapore Airlines.
Vistara is likely to offer 148 seats in a three-class configuration in its Airbus A320s, industry sources said.
Vistara is trying to be leaner and meaner, while staying focused on the original brand promise; it aims to be profitable by FY21. Arindam Majumder reports.
From limousine pick-ups to on-board chefs, Asia's premium airlines are investing hundreds of millions of dollars on luxury services.
AirAsia India, which is using the training facilities of its parent airline AirAsia in Malaysia, plans to set up similar facilities in India in the coming years, airline sources said.
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