Akasa Air on Tuesday said it has added the 20th aircraft to its fleet that also makes the airline eligible to start international operations. The carrier, which will complete one year of operations on August 7, has also become the first airline in Asia to have the Boeing 737-8-200 variant. According to a release, the Boeing 737-8-200 aircraft aligns with Akasa Air's continued efforts to control operating costs.
The price of jet fuel (ATF) was sharply increased by 7.5 per cent on Tuesday, while the cost of LPG used in commercial establishments was reduced by Rs 58.50 per cylinder, reflecting shifts in international benchmark rates. After three rounds of price cuts, aviation turbine fuel (ATF) price was increased by Rs 6,271.5 per kilolitre, or 7.5 per cent, to Rs 89,344.05 per kl in the national capital - home to one of the busiest airports in the country, according to state-owned fuel retailers.
The cost available per seat km of an FSC, which used to be Rs 4.60 compared with Rs 2.40 of their low-cost counterpart, has fallen to Rs 3.02, only 25 per cent more than the latter.
The principal problem lies in lack of training infrastructure and relatively lax safety standards.
The airline operates nearly 950 weekly flights on 28 destinations within and outside of Saudi Arabia.
The country's largest airline IndiGo on Friday saw its profit after tax slide 18.3 per cent to Rs 2,448.8 crore in the three months ended December 2024 due to foreign exchange loss even as revenue jumped on higher capacity and passenger traffic. The carrier, which had a fleet of 437 planes at the end of December, is planning to induct wet leased planes for long range flights and expects the number of grounded aircraft to come down to 40s by the start of next financial year from the current level of 60s.
IndiGo has delivered impressive operating performance in the past six quarters as it navigated cost and capacity challenges. It has managed to mitigate the impact of faulty engine-related groundings. The airline has also managed costs related to grounding, expensive secondary leasing, increasing airport charges, and pilot compensation inflation and delivered stronger yields and spreads.
Singapore Airlines will make an additional investment of Rs 3,194.5 crore in Tata Group-owned Air India post-merger of Vistara in November. The merger, announced on November 29, 2022, and set to be completed on November 11, 2024, will result in Singapore Airlines having a 25.1 per cent stake in the enlarged Air India. Full-service carrier Vistara, which started flying on January 9, 2015, is a joint venture between Tatas and Singapore Airlines, where the latter holds a 49 per cent shareholding.
The Karnataka high court stayed enforcement of the Karnataka Cinemas (Regulation) (Amendment) Rules, 2025, which fixed a cap for movie ticket prices at Rs 200 across the state.
The Karnataka High Court has stayed the enforcement of a rule that capped movie ticket prices at Rs 200 across the state, following a petition by the Multiplex Association of India and other cinema stakeholders.
Airlines have to deal with high operating costs - fuel, taxation, airport charges - in a very competitive environment.
India has recorded the second-highest increase in domestic airfares in the Asia-Pacific (APAC) and West Asian regions, climbing by 43 per cent in the first half of 2024 compared to pre-pandemic levels in 2019, second only to Vietnam (63 per cent). India ranks third in fare increases during the same period in international skies, behind the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Malaysia. The airfare study conducted by Airports Council International (ACI), which represents 617 airports in this region, was done in partnership with Flare Aviation Consulting.
With fewer passengers airlines bracing for a rise in operating costs due to a spike in crude prices
'In the inspections, no issues were found with the said locking mechanism.'
Indian airline industry is expecting to prune its net losses to Rs 3,000-5,000 crore in this fiscal from an estimated Rs 17,000-17,500 crore in FY2023 on the back of improved yields and stable cost environment, credit ratings agency ICRA said on Tuesday. At the same time, ICRA also estimated that domestic air passenger traffic will expand by 8-13 per cent each in FY2024 and FY2025. The rating agency has also maintained its stable outlook on the industry in view of healthy passenger traffic growth, improved yields and a stable cost environment.
Hyderabad-based Turbo Megha Airways takes off, promising affordable fares and other benefits.
'This (crash) is one of those times where there is no concrete explanation yet for what happened. I think that adds to my parents' worry.'
Air India has cancelled eight flights, including four international services, on Friday due to enhanced maintenance and operational reasons, the airline said.
Most of them had to wind up operations due to high operating cost, expensive fuel and longer than expected gestation period.
Jet fuel constitutes over 40 per cent of an airline's operating costs and the price cut will bring relief to the cash-strapped carriers.
Key stimuli of the government's relief package will be a tax break on jet fuel, waiver of parking and landing charges at airports for the next six months and deferment of payment to oil companies by three months.
Over the past eight months, a team of 80 people has been diligently working to harmonise operating procedures across four airlines run by the Tata group, as part of two mergers, revealed Campbell Wilson, Air India's chief executive officer (CEO), on Friday. The Tata group is consolidating its aviation business by merging four airlines into two: Air India and Vistara are merging to form a single full-service carrier, while AIX Connect and Air India Express are combining to create a unified low-cost carrier (as a subsidiary of Air India).
Cooking oil is often discarded after being used for frying at home or in restaurants. However, a refinery of IndianOil has now won a certification to use the same oil to produce sustainable aviation fuel (SAF), the company chairman Arvinder Singh Sahney said.
'We have informed the government multiple times that the situation in the US and India are different.' 'Here, there will be a 500 MHz gap in the frequencies which will safely allow aviation without interference.'
Why not stream all the data in real time to multiple recipients? It would make the investigation of aviation incidents much easier and far more transparent, recommends Devangshu Datta.
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.
Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Kochi airports have hiked their landing charges by up to 45 per cent, increasing the operating cost for airlines at a time they are facing financial constraints because of the two months of grounding and weak demand.
'That refresh programme -- because they are big aircraft and we cannot ground them all at the same time -- will last well into 2027.'
Following a significant power outage, operations at the London Heathrow (LHR) have been suspended till 2359 hours (local time) on March 21 (05.30 am March 22, IST).
Indigo has zero competition on 61.2 per cent of its 838 domestic routes.
The total cost will include expenses related to crew, fuel, navigation, landing and parking charges.
'Within five years, we should be achieving more on the international front than what it took most airlines 15 to 20 years back.'
Air India's use of artificial intelligence (AI) has had a huge impact on the airline major's call centre volumes and the technology integration has reduced costs by 100 times, a senior company executive said on Wednesday. The airline launched its own chatbot AI.g, earlier known as Maharaja, in May 2023. The chatbot has answered approximately two million queries since its launch, handling 93 per cent of customer inquiries without needing to pass them on to call centre agents, said Sathya Ramaswamy, Chief Digital and Technology Officer, Air India.
Nearly 80 domestic and international flights received bomb threats in less than 24 hours that later turned out to be hoaxes, keeping thousands of passengers and security agencies on tenterhooks.
With the Middle East tensions flaring up, Air India has temporarily suspended its Tel Aviv flights and airlines have charted alternative flight paths to avoid the Iranian airspace.
Brent crude oil price surged 4 per cent on Friday, following tension between Iran and the US. Airlines, however, have been unable to pass on the price increase to customers due to the soft demand.
Some major contracts coming up for renewal include TCS' deals with Star Alliance, a consortium of airlines based in Germany, and Nielsen; Infosys' deals with GE Appliances and Daimler; HCLTech's with UK-based life insurer Chesnara; Wipro's with German electric utility company E.ON and Petrobras of Brazil; and Tech Mahindra's with Circle Health.
Destinations like Coorg, Munnar, the Western Ghats, and parts of the North East, are at their scenic best in the monsoon.
FIA is a body of four established domestic private airlines -- Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.
