Air India would add four more aircraft to the Air India Express fleet this year to expand its budget flight services, a top company official said.
Two of these flights were cancelled after the passengers had already boarded the aircraft, the airline said.
Close on the heels of introducing a direct flight from Dubai to Nagpur on September 24, Air India Express is adding two more Indian destinations to its schedule, Jaipur and Lucknow, said Freddie Vaz, regional Director of Air India.
According to the officials, generally, a passenger is not served more than 100 ml of liquor during a flight.
'CORSIA has set impossible targets. It tries to limit countries to the emission levels of the number of aircraft that they had in 2020. That has to be opposed.'
'Other than blaming the pilot, there is zero accountability.'
The truth about what triggered the fatal crash of the Dreamliner should not only help bring the guilty to book, but also outline the future course of action in aviation safety, notes Nivedita Mookerji.
It's part of the carrier' turnaround plan.
'Who tried engine relight?' 'If the first officer was the one flying at takeoff, the captain may have taken control immediately post-thrust loss.' 'But the AAIB report doesn't clarify any of this.'
Each aircraft will cost about $50 million and the purchase is being funded by the US-based Exim Bank. The airline operates 143 flights a week from Indian cities to 12 destinations in the Far East and West Asian countries. In its fourth year of operation, the international budget carrier now has 11 fully owned aircraft, while seven are on lease, which will expire in 2010.
'...rectification has to happen then and there, and that takes additional time.'
As many as 19 flights have received bomb threats in three days and a Riyadh-bound IndiGo flight was diverted to Muscat due to the threat, according to officials.
An Air India aircraft with 242 passengers on board heading to London crashed in the Meghaninagar area near Ahmedabad airport on Thursday afternoon, the police said.
In the past few days, more than 40 flights operated by the Indian carriers have received bomb threats which later turned out to be hoaxes.
With only a few days to go before the country celebrates Holi, several airline companies offered discounts on fares on the occasion of the festival of colours. While two airlines are providing discounts on both domestic and international networks, another has the offer only for the domestic sector. Low-cost airline Akasa Air said it is offering an all-inclusive one-way fare starting at Rs 1,499 on domestic routes.
Tata Group-owned Air India shaved off its losses by 60 per cent to Rs 4,444.10 crore in FY24 over the previous year, according to the Tata Sons annual report for 2023-24. The airline had reported a loss of Rs 11,387.96 crore in FY23, the annual report said.
Executives from India's leading airlines are conducting internal meetings to devise alternative routes for their international flights that currently pass through Pakistani airspace.
'That refresh programme -- because they are big aircraft and we cannot ground them all at the same time -- will last well into 2027.'
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.
The threats via microblogging platform X came a day after three international flights originating from Mumbai received bomb threats, causing trouble to hundreds of passengers and airline crew.
The bulk of Indian carriers flying to Dubai are low-cost carriers, which include IndiGo, Air India Express, and SpiceJet.
The Air India Express Employees Union, which is affiliated with the Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh, has written a letter to the chief labour commissioner (central) in this regard.
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.
Air India has covered a lot of ground since privatisation and its global coverage will further increase in the years ahead, the airline's chief Campbell Wilson said on Wednesday. He also said the interior refit of the single-aisle fleet, serving domestic and short-haul international destinations, is underway, and will be completed by mid-2025.
In a statement, Civil Aviation Minister K Rammohan Naidu said the airport and emergency teams responded swiftly and effectively after a full emergency was declared at 18.05 hours.
So far this week, more than 90 flights have received bomb threats and most of them have turned out to be hoaxes.
Air India Express on Thursday cancelled 85 flights or around 23 per cent of the total daily capacity as the disruptions due to the cabin crew shortage continue and said Air India will operate services on 20 of its routes to minimise inconvenience to passengers.
"Heartbroken by the loss of Shri @RNTata2000 Ji, whose visionary leadership not only transformed India's industry but also played a pivotal role in shaping our aviation sector," Naidu said in a post on X.
An IndiGo aircraft grazed the wings of an Air India Express plane at the Kolkata airport on Wednesday, leaving the wings of both aircraft damaged, officials said.
Some of the proposed policies have been welcomed by pilots and cabin crew, while others have sparked criticism.
The Tatas have collectively increased their aggregate airlines seat capacity across domestic and international markets by an impressive 20 per cent, going from 64.03 million in calendar year (CY) 2023 to 76.72 million in the current CY, according to data shared by the group that controls Air India in which Vistara has been merged recently. The Tatas also run Air India Express in which Air Asia India has been merged.
Air India will soon have a new crew management system that will help strengthen rostering rules and enable faster recovery from scheduled disruptions. In a message to the staff on Friday, Air India CEO and MD Campbell Wilson said that in the next two weeks, there will be the CAE Crew Management System that will "strengthen our systems' adherence to rostering rules, improving the tracking of training & qualifications, and enabling faster recovery from schedule disruptions". The new system also comes against the backdrop of concerns flagged by pilots' unions about rostering issues.
On Friday, the Alaska Airlines plane's outer section, including a window, fell off mid-air.
The trails of mega-mergers, tailwinds of expanding fleets, flights and airports will dot the fast-growing Indian aviation firmament in 2025, though the dark clouds of supply chain woes will persist longer. Also, new airline takeoffs, the future trajectory of revised norms to tackle pilot fatigue and efforts to reduce carbon emissions will be on the radar.
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.
Notwithstanding the sweltering heat engulfing major cities, travellers can find solace in the steady airfares to popular summer destinations like Srinagar, Bagdogra, and Kochi. According to airline executives, capacity increases and moderate demand have kept spot airfares from scorching cities like Delhi on a par with the same period last year.
In a December 2012 interview, Ratan Tata, then preparing to step down as chairman of Tata Sons, expressed doubts about the Tata group re-entering the aviation sector, calling it a space plagued by "destructive competition". But beneath that frustration lay nearly two decades of failed attempts to conquer the Indian skies. In 1994, Tata, along with Singapore Airlines, had plans to launch a joint venture (JV) airline in India.
Air India, which operates 72 weekly flights from various cities to Dubai, and IndiGo cancelled their services on Wednesday.
Air India Express and AirAsia India have moved to a unified reservation system, whereby passengers can make bookings for both airlines through an integrated website. The move is part of the ongoing process of merging AirAsia India with Air India Express. The combined entity will focus on leisure-oriented and price-sensitive markets.
Sources in the know said a homeless man barged into the room at the hotel where the female cabin crew was staying and assaulted her.
