Several Indian students stuck in eastern parts of Ukraine, which is largely affected by the Russian military offensive, are facing a grim situation as it is difficult for them to travel by road to reach the western borders and move out of the war-hit country, one of the students returned to India said.
In a circular issued on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia's General Authority of Civil Aviation said it was "suspending travel to and from the following countries: (India, Brazil and Argentina) including any person who has been in any of the mentioned countries above in the last 14 days prior to their arrival to the Kingdom".
The airline's 100 per cent shareholding in profit-making budget carrier Air India Express as well as 50 per cent shareholding in equal joint venture Air India SATS Airport Services would also be sold.
"As on 31.12.2020, the total Air India dues against various Government Departments on account of airfare including dues towards VVIP Operations were Rs 498.17 crore," the GoI said in a written reply in Lok Sabha
The accident occurred at 7:45 pm while the pilot was attempting to land the B737 Air India Express from Dubai at the tabletop runway of the Karipur International Airport.
Tata Sons has started the process of due diligence of state-owned Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express. Sources said the group has appointed Bain and Company and Seabury Group for this purpose. Once complete, a financial bid will be submitted and a deal to take over the airline is likely to fructify by end of this year or even earlier, people involved in the process said. Simultaneously, the group has brought in veterans in the aviation business from Delta and United Airlines to prepare a plan for post-merger integration of Air India with its existing airline ventures. Tata Sons operates Vistara - a 51:49 percent joint venture with Singapore Airlines and Air Asia India, in which Tatas hold 83.67 per cent stakes.
The first two special flights that will operate from Thursday to evacuate Indians stranded in the UAE due to the coronavirus pandemic
Captain Sathe was a former Indian Air Force Test pilot. He was commissioned into service in 1981 and served in the force for 22 years.
Air India passenger flights were barred from landing in Hong Kong between August 18 and August 31 after 14 passengers on its Delhi-Hong Kong flight of August 14 tested positive for COVID-19 post arrival.
The flight from Dubai with 190 people, including a six-member crew, overshot the tabletop runway during landing at the Kozhikode airport in heavy rain on Friday, killing 18 people, including both the pilots.
The average number of flights the Air India group, including subsidiaries Alliance Air and Air India Express, operates daily is 674.
The new owner may be allowed to dispose of assets accruing from the 10-26 per cent of the net assets of the company.
This is a setback for the divestment process of Air India as no other Indian airline has the capability to fund the process
The pilots have been "derostered" pending investigation, Air India Express later said in a statement.
Earlier, budget carrier SpiceJet said it would hire 500 from Jet, including 100 pilots. Air India Express has also inducted around 25 commanders from the grounded airline.
Along with IAF officials, the AAIB will also reach out to experienced private sector executives, meteorologists, and aviation psychologists to be part of the probe.
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.
Launching its biggest ever repatriation exercise, India on Thursday airlifted 363 of its citizens, including nine infants, stranded in the United Arab Emirates due to the international travel lockdown over the COVID-19 pandemic.
'It is indeed a fact that several issues were routinely red-flagged by DGCA, and were addressed by the (Kozhikode) airport operator. These pertain to excessive rubber deposits, water stagnation, cracks and other routine issues,' Puri tweeted a day after the plane crash in Kozhikode that claimed at least 18 lives.
After a hiatus of nearly two decades, the government's programme to privatise state-owned firms restarted with the handing over of debt-laden national carrier Air India to the Tata Group. With the new owner shelling out Rs 18,000 crore for the buyout of the 'Maharaja', this would be the highest-ever amount garnered through privatisation, and is even more than the cumulative sum mopped up through strategic sales from 1999-00 to 2003-04. The government had in October last year inked the share purchase agreement with the Tata Group for sale of national carrier Air India for Rs 18,000 crore. Tatas would pay Rs 2,700 crore cash and take over Rs 15,300 crore of the airline's debt.
During the second phase of the Vande Bharat Mission, 30,000 Indians are being brought back in India from 31 countries on board 149 flights between May 16 and 22.
The Delhi high court on Thursday dismissed BJP leader Subramanian Swamy's plea seeking to set aside the Air India divestment process on the allegation that the methodology adopted by the government in the valuation of the national carrier was "arbitrary, illegal and against public interest". The order was passed by a bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice Jyoti Singh. The court said a detailed order will be uploaded. "Dr. Subramanian Swamy, sir we are dismissing this matter...," the bench said.
The new owners of Air India will have to retain all the employees of the national carrier for at least one year post which they can offer a VRS. The gratuity, pension fund and post retirement medical benefits of existing and past employees too would be honoured by the new owner, civil aviation secretary Rajiv Bansal said. Tata Sons has emerged as the winning bidder for Air India with the government accepting its Rs 18,000 crore offer to acquire 100 per cent of the debt-laden state-run carrier.
The 184 passengers on board the Air India Express plane from Dubai that crashed on Friday evening had waited a long time to get tickets on the repatriation flight, part of the Centre's Vande Bharat Mission to bring back Indians stranded abroad in the coronavirus pandemic. For some, the homecoming never happened. 18 people were killed, including the two pilots.
A group of 219 employees of Air India along with a private financial institution have submitted an expression of interest (EOI) for the national carrier.
He also assured the kin of victims that steps would be taken to get them compensation in line with an international convention of International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). Taking stock of the crash of the Dubai-Kozhikode AIE flight in Kozhikode and the relief measures, the minister said pilot in-command of the plane, Captain Deepak Vasant Sathe, among those killed in the accident, was one of the most experienced commanders with more than 10,000 flying hours.
To attract bidders, the government had decided to hive of around Rs 35,000 crore of the company's debt into a separate subsidiary, leaving around Rs 23,286 crore to be absorbed by the new bidder.
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.
The government has initiated the process for inviting financial bids for the sale of national carrier Air India and the deal is likely to conclude by September, sources said. Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group was among the "multiple" entities that had put in preliminary bids for buying loss-making Air India in December last year. The sources said that after analysing the preliminary bids, eligible bidders were given access to the Virtual Data Room (VDR) of Air India, following which investors' queries were answered.
The government will transfer about Rs 16,000 crore of unpaid fuel bills and other pending dues that Air India owes to suppliers, to a special purpose vehicle before handing over the loss-making airline to the Tata Group, a senior official said. Air India Assets Holding Ltd (AIAHL), which will hold non-core assets of Air India such as land and building, will also be saddled with 75 per cent of the airline's debt that the Tata Group is not taking over. Besides the debt, the excess liability going to AIAHL comprises unpaid fuel bills to oil companies, airport operators and vendors, said Tuhin Kanta Pandey, Secretary to the Department of Investment and Public Asset Management - the department running the privatisation programme of the government.
Serving pilots question the Kozhikode plane crash report findings.
A person in the know of the PIM details said an entity can put in bid for Air India on the "strength of its parent", which was not there before. A consortium can participate in the disinvestment process, provided each partner has at least 10 per cent stake as well as 10 per cent of the Rs 3,500 crore net worth requirement, according to the bid document. The lead member of a consortium should have at least 26 per cent stake. Individuals are allowed to bid as part of consortium.
Apart from the Adani group, the Tata group, the Hinduja group, Indigo and a New York-based fund, Interups, are expected to submit EoIs.
However, this restriction would not be applicable for international all-cargo operations and flights specifically approved by the DGCA.
Since Friday evening, 41-year-old Shemir, who works as a logistics manager in Dubai Silicon Oasis, has been making frantic phone calls to different trauma centres in Kerala near the Kozhikode airport to get information of his family members on board the flight.
The acquisition will give the Tatas a firm footing on international routes and generate economies of scale.
Tata Sons has emerged as the top bidder for the takeover of debt-laden State-run airline Air India but the bid is yet to be approved by a group of ministers headed by Home Minister Amit Shah, sources said.
Virtually addressing employees of Air India across the globe, he said for the airline to be the best again there will be an organisational redesign, and it will "require a huge transformation, probably the largest transformation and the change all of you would ever go through". The carrier will expand its "outreach both domestically and internationally" and it has the desire to connect India with every part of the globe, he added.
"Financial bids for Air India disinvestment received by Transaction Adviser. Process now moves to concluding stage," DIPAM Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey tweeted.
Jet Airways, SpiceJet and Vistara also operated all women crew flights, though on their domestic network.
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