As the Tata group inches closer to taking over Air India in January 2022, the $242-billion conglomerate will also inherit a stake in Kerala's Cochin airport. The Tatas would become the only airline to have an operational stake in a major Indian airport. The airport is a strategic hub connecting India to Middle East nations - home to the largest share of Indian migrant workers. In addition to Air India and Air India Express, private carrier Indigo also uses Cochin to ferry the lucrative 'Malayali Gulf traffic' to multiple locations like Jeddah, Riyadh, Sharjah, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Doha, Kuwait and Bahrain, among others. According to regulatory filings, Air India has a three per cent stake in Cochin International Airport.
The government on Monday issued a letter of intent (LoI) confirming the sale of its 100 per cent stake in loss-making Air India to Tata Group for Rs 18,000 crore, a senior official said. Last week, the government had accepted an offer by Talace Pvt Ltd, a unit of the holding company of salt-to-software conglomerate, to pay Rs 2,700 crore in cash and takeover Rs 15,300 crore of the airline's debt. Subsequent to that, an LoI has now been issued to Tata confirming the government's willingness to sell its 100 per cent stake in the airline.
A senior official in the central labour commissioner's office said the efforts of the government were to resolve the cases amicably and not to press for legal action against employers. "Everyone is going through tough times. We could initiate legal action if we want but that's not the idea. We want to address the issues amicably," the official said.
The man was reissued the ticket and allowed to board the flight once the airline staff at the Jaipur airport realised that he is not the comedian who is on the no-fly list of four airlines, including Air India.
A messy masala about an antihero bolstered by tons of whimsy, controversy and high drama, Khalnayak's hype is stuff of history. Sukanya Verma celebrates 30 years of this blockbuster.
The Tatas are rather overwhelmed with some facets of the airline they have discovered, but even more unnerved by what they may not have yet uncovered, reveals Anjuli Bhargava.
A SpiceJet aircraft had booked a charter flight by a Madurai-based private person for the mid-air marriage ceremony but authorities were not informed regarding the marriage on board.
Despite partial restoration of salaries, pilots across airlines remain dissatisfied, throwing challenges for managers.
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.
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.
Modi said Ayurveda is India's heritage whose expansion entails the welfare of humanity and all Indians will be happy to see that the country's traditional knowledge is making other countries prosperous.
Race Across America -- which spans a little over 3,000 miles, from the west coast of the US to its east -- is often called the toughest race in the world. Indian cyclists are now returning multiple finishes at RAAM including podium positions within age categories, discovers Shyam G Menon.
Three evacuation flights from Romania's capital Bucharest and Hungary's capital Budapest came to India on Tuesday with 616 Indian nationals who were stranded in Ukraine due to the Russian military offensive, officials said.
Trekking is a truly transformative experience. Let me tell you why.
The GMR group-run Delhi and Hyderabad airports have not only been gleaming examples of successful public-private partnerships, but they are also among the country's favourites.
Nearly 100 Indian-Americans are on the ballot for the midterm elections and have emerged as strong contenders.
Within two weeks of many airlines deciding to roll back salary cuts encouraged by a steady increase in traffic flow, a second wave of coronavirus along with rules of compulsory RT-PCR test has hit forward bookings. The fears of last summer, when the pandemic had overturned all the wisdom of airline boardrooms, have returned to haunt the aviation industry. According to an official in the Ministry of Civil Aviation, flight occupancy is down to 60 per cent from 70 per cent in the first week of March. Airline lobby group IATA estimates that low cost airlines need to fly at 80 per cent occupancy to be profitable.
Etihad, Emirates and Qatar Airways have combined hired more than 100 Indian pilots in the last six months.
Many argue that the airline could achieve its full potential if Nusli Wadia were to run it the way he does Britannia.
Flight cancellations and subsequent grounding of Jet Airways adversely impacted seat capacity in the domestic market which also resulted in fares going up.
National carrier Air India became part of the 27-member global airlines grouping Star Alliance, as budget airline AirAsia India launched operations and Tata-SIA joint venture carrier Vistara received the flying permit and announced its intentions to start operations from January 9.
The splendid rock figures around Cappadocia and the silent, eternal ruins of Ephesus made a trip to Turkey even more memorable.
India's biggest firm, Reliance Industries, has decided to cut salaries by 10 per cent in its oil and refining divisions. Several smaller companies like Kajaria Ceramics have followed suit with cuts as high as 40 per cent for those earning more than Rs 50 lakh.
Over 50 per cent of all traffic to Jeddah consists pilgrims headed to Mecca and Medina.
The shipping business is like the heaving sea -- it's up and down, observes Shyam G Menon.
IndiGo was set up in 2006 by businessman Rahul Bhatia and Rakesh Gangwal, a former CEO for US Airways Group.
The losses are primarily because the venture operated only for 18 days in June, with only two flights.
Ajit Mishra, vice president, Research, Religare Broking, answers your stock market queries.
SpiceJet is the first Indian low fare airline to establish such an arrangement with a foreign airline.
Budget carrier Go Airlines, which has rebranded itself as 'Go First', has filed preliminary papers for an initial share sale worth Rs 3,600 crore.
Failure to reinstate salary even two years after the drastic cuts has landed the airline industry in a massive industrial relation crisis. While employees of Air India had organised a strike back in 2011, it is for the first time that private airlines are facing serious stress related to workers. IndiGo witnessed two of them, back to back. In the first instance, around 50 per cent of the IndiGo flights were delayed as a large number of crew members went on mass sick leave, apparently to participate in a rival airline's walk-in job interview.
For any airline to be eligible for restructuring, the current ratio has to be equal to or higher than 0.4, while 'debt to Ebitda' has to be equal to or less than 5.5.
Companies across the sector are restructuring payrolls of crew, cutting allowances, and extending leave without pay duration as they realise they will have more aircraft and employees compared to customers.
Hundreds of pilots are staring at a long wait to get the job of their dreams after completing the course, the cost of which runs to Rs 1 crore.
Corporate leaders said a stable government at the Centre will help boost infrastructure spend, address agricultural distress, and encouraging employment.
The PBD this year functions as a political stage for the BJP government at the Centre and in Uttar Pradesh. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi have been wooing the Indian diaspora through widely publicised events across the country. At the PBD, the mood was either largely pro-Modi, and when not, apolitical.
Piramals are the largest investors in the Indian real estate sector after HDFC, with investments worth $3 billion already.
No-frills carrier IndiGo has expressed interest to buy Air India
Airlines are slashing salaries and re-negotiating vendor contracts as drastic fall in passengers has hurt revenue. Go First has cut staff salaries by around 16 per cent while IndiGo and SpiceJet are enforcing a leave without pay (LWP) policy and pay by the hour structure respectively to prune expenses. Vistara, which reversed pay cuts for junior staff including managers and cabin crew in March, is not touching employee salaries at the moment and instead focusing on vendor renegotiation and maximising cargo revenue. An Air India executive said efforts are on to pay salaries by 7th or 8th of June.
If that happens, Jet Airways will be the first bankrupt airline which will be revived under the Insolvency process.
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