Domestic air passenger traffic remained 44 per cent lower in the April-December 2021 against the corresponding period of FY20, but saw a jump of 52 per cent year-on-year to 111 lakh in December 2021, according to rating agency ICRA. The total domestic passenger traffic had stood at 73 lakh in December 2020, according to a report by the rating agency. It also said that the emergence of new coronavirus variant and reactionary restrictions impacting air travel remain near term-challenges for the airline industry.
Facing disruptions due to non-availability of crew, Vistara on Sunday announced reducing 10 per cent of its capacity or 25-30 flights daily and most of the cancellations are in the domestic network as the Tata Group airline strives to stabilise operations. The full-service carrier is to operate over 300 flights daily in the ongoing summer schedule and witnessed significant disruptions earlier this week as many pilots reported sick, resulting in cancellations of flights. "We are carefully scaling back our operations by around 25-30 flights per day, i.e. roughly 10 per cent of the capacity we were operating.
Air passengers might have a reason to smile this Diwali season as average airfares on many domestic routes have dropped 20-25 per cent compared to the year-ago period, according to an analysis. Increased capacity and the recent fall in oil prices are considered to be among the factors for the fall in air ticket prices. The analysis by travel portal ixigo showed that average airfare on the domestic routes have declined in the range of 20-25 per cent.
Among the impacted flights, Air India's flight AI 185 from the national capital to Vancouver that was to depart early in the morning was rescheduled.
The airline owes lakhs of rupees to passengers and its vendors.
The phenomenon of fog is largely Delhi-centric. 'Airlines may think that we only have conditions of extreme fog on a few days every year, and spending a pilot's time and the airline's money on training can add up to its expenses.' 'So, they may prefer holding it for a few days.'
Emirates has been voted as the world's best airline in 2016 by travellers around the world.
The plane that took off from Dubai in the United Arab Emirates carrying 303 Indian passengers, including many minors, was grounded at the Chalons-Vatry airport in Marne on Thursday.
Passengers holding confirmed RT tickets on Jet Airways will be allowed to avail special stranded passenger fares from the destinations common with Air India.
The travel agents have demanded refunds for customers
Pakistan's national flag carrier on Thursday suspended flight operations to Afghanistan due to what it called "security concerns", hours after the Taliban government threatened to ban the airline unless it reduced the fare on the Kabul-Islamabad route to previous levels.
Airlines have opposed the rules that make it compulsory for them to pay compensation to passengers in case a flight is delayed by more than four hours
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.
Pooja Kataria, a passenger on the IC-814 flight hijacked in 1999, says viewers should approach the recently released web series based on the incident as entertainment rather than sparking controversy.
The DGCA has derostered the Air Traffic Controller (ATC) who was on duty at the time of the incident on Saturday, while IndiGo has initiated a probe into the matter
Airlines sought a limited period concession of the standing rule of slot allocation, which mandates that firms must operate at least 80 per cent of their allocated slots.
'Ajit Doval said, "They are threatening us now".'
In a statement, an Air India spokesperson said a passenger travelling in business class was off boarded on the advice of the captain following some argument with members of the crew before the scheduled pushback.
While the airline is accommodating passengers on available flights, this is resulting in extending travel time and detour for customers.
An executive of a private airline said even though volume picked up, it will be difficult for airlines to make money as fares have remained low even during festive season.
Domestic air passenger traffic was back to the growth trajectory in June amid the falling number of COVID-19 cases in the country with around three million passengers flying on local routes in the previous month as against around two million in May, a report said on Tuesday. Though there is some recovery observed in June, stress on demand continues, driven largely by the second wave of the pandemic, limiting travel to only necessary travel, credit rating agency ICRA said in its report. On a sequential basis, domestic passenger traffic was up 41-42 per cent in June over May.
Vistara started allowing passengers to book an extra seat from Tuesday. IndiGo and SpiceJet, too, are in the final stages of designing such a product to be sold as an add-on.
In further easing of restrictions, the government on Wednesday permitted Indian airlines to increase the number of domestic passenger flights to 60 per cent of their pre-Covid services, according to an official order.
Just over a three-hour flight from Delhi, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Georgia have seen a big jump in visitors.
It neither mentions timelines for refund or compensation, nor talks about penal provisions for airlines.
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.
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.
Nepalese authorities on Tuesday started handing over to family members the bodies of those killed in the January 14 crash of a Yeti Airlines passenger plane with 72 people on board.
The Cyberster is currently sold in the UK for about Rs 63 lakh and is expected to be priced between Rs 65 lakh and Rs 70 lakhs.
Days after saying that there is no need for subsidies to achieve greater penetration of electric vehicles (EVs), Union Minister of Road Transport and Highways Nitin Gadkari on Monday clarified that the view is his own, but any official call on EV subsidies is not one that he can take.
Five decades ago, 87 plane crashes took away the lives of 1,597 people.
Only 30 flights per week will operate between India and the UK when services resume from January 8 and this arrangement will continue till January 23, Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri had said on Friday.
Normal life was thrown out of gear in Kashmir on Saturday as most areas of the valley received snowfall, disrupting flight and railway operations and also leading to the closure of the Srinagar-Jammu National Highway, officials said.
The safety and security of citizens is primary for the government, he said.
The mortal remains of co-pilot Akhilesh Kumar were cremated on Sunday "with attendance from all family members as well as with the officials of Air India and Air India Express present to mark respect to the departed soul at Mathura, his hometown".
IndiGo had last week offloaded 70 passengers from a Raipur -bound flight from Hyderabad alleging "unruly behaviour".
Aviation consultancy CAPA on Thursday said allowing domestic airlines to take advance bookings from April 15 is "unfair" to consumers since a decision on lifting the nationwide lockdown is yet to be taken. During the lockdown period only special flights approved by aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation, medical evacuation flights and those carrying cargo, including medical equipment, to and from different parts of the country are operational.
The Indian embassy in France has reached and obtained consular access.
The Nicaragua bound charter Legend Airlines Airbus A340 flight, that was grounded at Vatry airport in France for four days on suspicion of human trafficking, arrived in Mumbai on Tuesday, December 26, 2023.
In a relief for people travelling long distances, the Indian Railways is set to resume serving cooked meals on trains, a service which was discontinued in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
