The two episodes on a single day have taken the total number of technical malfunction incidents involving SpiceJet aircraft to seven in the last 17 days.
Air India on Friday said it has completed the acquisition of its first A350-900 aircraft by way of a finance lease transaction with HSBC through the GIFT City. This is also the first wide body aircraft to be leased through the GIFT City, the country's first International Financial Services Centre (IFSC). In a release, the airline said the transaction was facilitated by its wholly-owned subsidiary AI Fleet Services Ltd (AIFS) and is also the first financing transaction from the orders for 470 aircraft that were made earlier this year.
A senior DGCA official said 23,403 departures per week have been finalised, covering 103 airports, which is 1.2 per cent higher than the 23,117 operated during the previous winter schedule.
The Boeing 737 took off from Bole International Airport in Addis Ababa at 8.38 am.
A SpiceJet plane was damaged on Monday when its wing hit a lightning pole at the Delhi airport when the aircraft was pushed back from the parking position to be ready for takeoff to Jammu, DGCA officials said.
The country's new scheduled airline Akasa Air is "well capitalised" and will allow carrying of domesticated dogs and cats onboard along with passengers from November, according to its senior executives. The airline, which began operations on August 7, also plans to launch international operations in the second half of next year. Akasa Air CEO Vinay Dube said the airline is well capitalised and is not looking to have new investors.
An Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 737 plane with 85 people on board crashed, shortly after taking off from Beirut. The flight was bound from Beirut for Addis Ababa.
The plane can fly non-stop to Singapore, Doha (Qatar), Kuwait, Abu Dhabi (UAE), Riyadh (Saudi Arabia), Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia), Tehran (Iran), Salalah (Oman) and Kunming (China), among other destinations, from various Indian airports.
Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed new airline Akasa is in talks with US aerospace company Boeing for buying up to 100 737 Max aircraft. Former Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube and his family members are promoters while ex-IndiGo president Aditya Ghosh is a board member of the airline. The airline is in negotiation with Boeing and has reached out to the government to recertify the aircraft which has been grounded since 2018 after two crashes killing 349 persons, according to sources in the know.
About 40 quit last November as the airline cut down its fleet.
The Tata group-owned Air India will induct over 90 aircraft in two years as it looks to widen its footprint and grab a larger market share. The plan includes 56 planes from the mega aircraft order that the airline has now finalised with Airbus and Boeing. These will be in addition to previously announced leases of 36 planes that include Airbus A320Neo, A321Neo, and Boeing 777 aircraft.
Airbus on Tuesday said it will deliver the first A350 aircraft to Air India by the end of this year and that the deal with the airline also marks the European aviation major's "emphatic return" to the wide-body segment in India, which is the fastest growing aviation market. As it looks to expand the fleet as well as operations, Tata Group-owned Air India on Tuesday announced that it will buy 250 planes from Airbus -- 210 from the A320 neo family and 40 A350. Remi Maillard, president and managing director of Airbus India and South Asia, said the company was very proud that the Tata Group has chosen A350 and A320 planes for Air India, adding that the magnitude of the order shows the appetite for growth in the Indian aviation industry, which is the fastest growing aviation market.
Here's a glimpse of all that happened around the world last week in images.
On May 22 2010, a Boeing 737-800 passenger jet operating Air India Express Flight 812 from Dubai to Mangalore, crashed on landing. Nearly 160 people lost their lives in the 2010 crash.
Boeing also won a $4.5-billion contract for 10 C-17 Globemaster III transport aircraft, and will soon start delivery of $3 billion contracts to supply 22 AH-64E Apache attack helicopters and 15 CH-47F Chinook heavy lift helicopters., reports Ajai Shukla.
There is enough room for growth in smaller Indian towns as per US and European aircraft manufacturers
The airline has suspended its international operations till Monday.
The Spicejet aircraft took off at around 12.10 pm, and according to residents of localities adjacent to the airport, who claimed to have witnessed the spectacle, it caught fire immediately.
At the recently concluded Dubai airshow, Akasa, Rakesh Radheyshyam Jhunjhunwala's new airline, signed a $9 billion deal with American aircraft maker Boeing to buy its 737 MAX planes and a $4 billion one for engines with CFM, a joint venture between GE of the US and Safran of France. Unlike his financial doppelganger Warren Buffett, who divested billions from his airline stock portfolio at the start of the pandemic, Jhunjhunwala is wagering his billions in a brand new airline. The legendary investor bought a roughly 40 per cent stake in SNV Aviation in September, Akasa's holding company, started in March by three former Jet Airways colleagues. With aviation still to recover from its pandemic slump, the big question around his foray into domestic aviation, due to take off in summer 2022, is whether it is another pie in the sky.
Jet Airways conducted its test flight to and from the Hyderabad airport on Thursday in a step towards obtaining the air operator certificate. Jet Airways, which has not flown since April 17, 2019, is currently in the process of re-launching operations under its new promoters Jalan-Kalrock Consortium. On Thursday, the airline's CEO Sanjiv Kapoor said on Twitter that the test flight's operation was a very emotional moment "for all the wonderful folks who have been working hard to get Jet back in the skies".
Jet's air operator certificate will lapse on May 19.
The new airline has begun recruiting pilots and is close to confirming its top executives, including a Singapore Airlines executive as its chief executive officer.
Air India will require more than 6,500 pilots to operate 470 aircraft that are to be supplied by Airbus and Boeing in the coming years, according to industry sources. Seeking to expand fleet as well as operations, the airline has placed orders for acquiring a total of 840 aircraft that includes an option to buy 370 planes. This is one of the largest aircraft order by any airline. Currently, Air India has around 1,600 pilots to operate its 113 aircraft fleet and in recent times, there have been instances of ultra-long haul flights getting cancelled or delayed due to shortage of crew.
High winds and low visibility caused pilots to abort a first attempt at landing.
Aircraft debris and some personal belongings have been found at the air crash site in Tengxian County of Wuzhou City, but no survivors, state-run CGTN reported on Tuesday.
Air-India has issued tenders to dry-lease two to four Boeing 747-400 combi aircraft for its own long-haul operations and another eleven Boeing 737-800s for its new subsidiary, Air-India Charters Limited.
SpiceJet to add 7 planes; another Rs 500 cr infusion in April.
The airlines' CEO expects it have 50 Boeing-737s and 30 Bomardier aircraft by 2016
India will require 1,740 planes over the next 20 years.
The Boeing 737 aircraft, which was stuck between the main runway and grassy area after skidded off on arrival at the airport late Monday night, was pulled back to the runway late Thursday night, paving the way for full-fledged operations at the aerodrome, officials said. The aircraft was towed away to the hangar earlier in the day.
After FY14's record loss, SpiceJet cuts capacity, chases costs, redraws flight schedules and puts more money in marketing to attract corporate travel.
IndiGo on Wednesday said it was exploring an earlier introduction of wide-body planes in its fleet to meet the growing demand for international travel. Industry sources said the airline was in talks with Norse Atlantic Airways to wet-lease six B787 planes in its fleet.
In a midair scare, a Guwahati-bound Jet Airways aircraft from Delhi with about 130 passengers and crew on board was on Thursday caught in severe turbulence, which the airline claimed was caused by a passing Boeing 747 jumbo.
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 commercial flight operations of Rakesh Jhunjhunwala-backed Akasa Air will be launched in July instead of June. "As we get closer to the airline launch date, we can now confirm refined estimates on our timelines. "We expect our first aircraft delivery by early June 2022, with the intention to start commercial operations in July 2022," Vinay Dube, CEO, Akasa Air, told PTI.
For the first time in 13 years, since Jet Airways' A330 planes exited the airline's fleet in around 2010, an Indian wide-body aircraft will have a Rolls-Royce-powered engine, with Air India ordering 40 Airbus A350 planes. On Tuesday, Air India announced its mega aircraft order for 470 aircraft, including A350 planes. The A350 aircraft, which will come in two variants, are powered solely by Rolls-Royce Trent XWB engines and the local team has begun work to assist Air India with its aircraft-induction plans.
At least 158 people are feared dead after an Air India Express aircraft from Dubai, carrying 173 passengers, overshot the runway while landing at the Mangalore airport in Karnataka on Saturday morning.
Jet Airways group CEO Ravi Chaturvedi has resigned. Amid difficult times for the aviation industry, Jet Airways has cut three of its biggest loss-making international routes and plans to lease four wide-body Boeing 777 aircraft, besides phasing out three Boeing 737 planes.
Jet Airways is seeing a churn in its senior management ahead of its planned take-off this year. Sudhir Gaur, accountable manager and acting chief executive officer, is the latest to quit the company. Finance head M Shivakumar and head of management information system (MIS) Farazad Patrawalla moved out a few weeks earlier. Gaur had been part of the initial team selected by the Kalrock-Jalan consortium, which secured approval from the National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) last June to revive the airline.
Jet has about 1,200 pilots operating Airbus, Boeing and ATR aircraft.
