Tatas-owned Air India plans to acquire no-frills carrier AirAsia India and has sought approval from the Competition Commission for the proposed deal. AirAsia India is majority-owned by Tata Sons Private Ltd with a shareholding of 83.67 per cent and the remaining stake is with AirAsia Investment Ltd (AAIL), which is part of Malaysia's AirAsia Group. Full service carrier Air India and its low-cost subsidiary Air India Express were acquired by Talace Private Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Tata Sons Private Ltd, last year. Besides, Tatas operate full service airline Vistara in a joint venture with Singapore Airlines.
The price movement and trading volumes for few days prior to Mistry's ouster will also be looked into
Mody, 92, held important positions in Tata group and led Tata Steel till he retired in the early 1990s.
Full service carrier Vistara will hike salaries of its pilots and cabin crew by up to 8 per cent from April amid deployment of higher capacities to meet rising travel demand, according to a source. The source also claimed that some 30 pilots have quit the airline in the last six months and are serving notice period after getting job offers mainly from the Gulf carriers. On Thursday, a senior Vistara official confirmed the salary hike for the pilots and cabin crew but denied that 30 pilots have left the airline.
They say it will have severe impact on their financial strength
An airline official said the ban is with immediate effect and is in addition to the 30-day ban it had imposed on the individual earlier.
A new Indian airline, proposed to be launched by the Tata Group, AirAsia and another Indian investor, is likely to start operations by the fourth quarter of this year with about $50 million initial investment by the Malaysian budget carrier.
Aviation regulator DGCA has suspended two pilots of Tata Group's Taj Air, a non-scheduled airline that flies Chairman Emeritus Ratan Tata and Chairman Cyrus Mistry among others, for allegedly falsifying medical records.
Domestic airlines may increase foreign flight frequencies
Air India has relaxed the new norm related to the accumulation of privilege leaves for those employees retiring in the current and next financial years. In March, the Tata Group-owned carrier revised its policy with respect to privilege leaves for both permanent and full-term contract staff to align the policy with prevailing market conditions. From April 1 onward, Privilege Leaves (PLs) accumulation limit for all employees is 60 days in a particular financial year.
The new airline will leverage business class seats to improve yield per passenger and fly only to big cities.
The Tata group has begun its second innings with Air India from a war zone. Being first up in Operation Ganga to evacuate Indian nationals from Ukraine, the salt-to-software conglomerate has faced a real war. But the fire-fighting that the group experienced in appointing a chief executive officer (CEO) for the airline that it acquired from the government in a Rs 18,000-crore deal recently may have felt no less.
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.
'I hope they all survive, but it is a tough world.' 'The carriers who are already established are already struggling.'
Two pilot unions at Air India have claimed that there is a shortage of pilots to operate the airline's long-haul and ultra-long haul flights. The concerns raised by the Indian Pilots Guild (IPG) and Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) also come against the backdrop of the Tatas-owned airline recently cancelling and rescheduling certain flights to and from the North American region due to crew shortage. In a joint letter written to Air India's chief human resources officer Suresh Dutt Tripathi on December 13, the unions said, "...we cannot maintain the printed planned roster due to a shortage of pilots, as CMS (crew management system) does not have standby pilots."
The US has ordered Tata-group owned Air India to pay a whopping $121.5 million as refunds and $1.4 million as penalties for extreme delays in providing refunds to passengers due to the cancellation or change in flights, mostly during the pandemic, officials said. Air India is among the six airlines that have agreed to cough up a total of over $600 million as refunds, the US Department of Transportation said on Monday. Air India's policy of "refund on request" is contrary to the Department of Transportation policy, which mandates air carriers to legally refund tickets in the case of cancellation or change in flight, officials said.
West Asian carriers are up against Air India and IndiGo in the battle for seats on lucrative international routes.
Tata-owned Air India has launched a Voluntary Retirement Scheme (VRS) for its employees- in the airline's first drive to reduce headcount. The salt-to-steel conglomerate acquired the carrier last year. As of November 2019, the airline had 9,426 permanent employees.
More than 1,600 employees of Air India, the former state-run carrier now owned by the Tata group, have opted for voluntary retirement under a scheme announced on June 1. These employees comprise 22 per cent of permanent staff (around 7,000). The airline has a total employee strength of around 10,800, including those on contract.
In January this year, Tata Sons invested an additional Rs 2,500 crore (Rs 25 billion) in Tata Teleservices which was used to repay loans of the wireless telephony company.
The proposal was cleared by the Foreign Investment Promotion Board, Finance Ministry said in a statement.
Some aircraft technicians at IndiGo are on sick leave since Friday demanding a revision in salaries. The protest comes days after the airline partially restored salaries of its pilots and cabin crew and made changes to its human resource (HR) policies. Some technicians in Hyderabad reported sick on Friday night while those from other bases skipped work on Sunday demanding a revision in salary, an industry source said.
Former Chairman and Managing Director of Tata Steel, Russi Mody, 96, passed away in Kolkata on Friday.
Tatas may look at selling part of its stake in couple of investments
Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Monday said it has issued a show cause notice to Air India regarding two incidents of passenger misbehaviour onboard a flight from Paris to New Delhi last month.
Looking to put money in aviation, infrastructure and also to reduce debt of group companies.
Second deal in 4 months after tie-up with RIL for cargo airlines.
The only two truly successful private airlines in India - Jet Airways and IndiGo - have been set up and run by people who knew the ins and outs of the trade well before they took to the skies.
Air India said on Monday that it has processed passengers refunds of more than Rs 150 crore during the first few months after its privatisation. After winning the bid for Air India on October 8 last year, the Tata Group took charge of the airline on January 27. Since then, the airline has been taking multiple steps to address the legacy issues such as stuck refunds.
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.
The Air India board met on Monday afternoon to consider the candidature of Ilker Ayci and after due deliberations approved the appointment of Ayci as the CEO & MD of Air India, Tata Sons said in a statement.
The Air India board met on Monday afternoon to consider the candidature of Ilker Ayci and after due deliberations approved the appointment of Ayci as the CEO & MD of Air India, Tata Sons said in a statement.
A four-member Delhi police team on Friday afternoon landed in Mumbai in search of the man, who had allegedly urinated on his female co-passenger on an Air India (AI) flight on November 26 last year, but found his home here locked, an official said.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday suspended Air India's Boeing simulator facility in Mumbai after finding certain alleged lapses during a spot check, a DGCA official said. The pilots, who were scheduled to undergo refresher courses at the Mumbai facility, will now not be able to do so.
GoAir and Tata-AIG have signed a deal of travel insurance for passengers who book online tickets.
Zudio was the standout performer as it tapped into the pentup demand in small-town India, at a pace never seen before, notes Indrajit Gupta, co-founder and director, Founding Fuel.
Tata group-owned Air India plans to hire expat pilots for its Boeing 777 planes as the airline is facing a shortage of pilots amid plans to expand its fleet as well as international operations, according to sources. The carrier is looking to rope in around 100 pilots for the wide-body Boeing 777 fleet and has approached various agencies that provide expat flight crew to airlines, the sources told PTI. The loss-making Air India, which was under government ownership for nearly seven decades till the Tata group took over in January 2022, had stopped hiring expat pilots many years ago to save costs.
Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara also operated all women crew flights, though on their domestic network.
Air India on Monday said it will progressively induct 30 new aircraft, including 5 wide-body Boeing planes, from December this year, as the Tatas-owned airline looks to boost its domestic and international services. The airline has signed leases and letters of intent for inducting 5 wide-body Boeing and 25 Airbus narrow-body planes over the next 15 months. "These new aircraft, which will enter service from late 2022, will increase the airline's fleet by over 25 per cent.
This incident was also not reported to the DGCA, for which the regulator pulled up the full-service carrier, stating its conduct was unprofessional and issued show cause notices to the airline, its director of flight safety and the crew that operated the New York-Delhi flight, asking them to explain within two weeks why action should not be taken against them.
