A Boeing team of experts would be flying to India to assess the situation arising out of a series of faults in Air India's Dreamliner aircraft, even as the airline insisted that the aircraft is safe.
Private carrier Air India on Monday announced placing an order to purchase 100 more Airbus aircraft, comprising 10 wide-body A350 and 90 narrow-body A320 family aircraft including A321neo.
At present, Air India offers eight first class, 35 business class and 195 economy class seats in its Boeing 777 200-LRs.
A selfie taken by Dr Prateek Joshi onboard the flight, showing the smiling family, has gone viral, capturing their excitement for the journey ahead.
'When there are glaring errors in the report, how can you trust anything in it?'
They were asked to wait for 72 hours, but the deadline passed on Sunday and the wait seems endless.
Totally, Air India has 27 Boeing 787s on order and will be taking deliveries of 20 of them by end of March 2015.
'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.'
More than 30 hours have passed since the horrific crash of Air India's London-bound flight in Meghaninagar area of Ahmedabad shortly after its take-off from the city airport snuffed out the lives of 265 people, including 241 passengers and 12 crew members.
The airline will induct four more Dreamliners next year to complete order of 27 of these aircraft
Last October, the national carrier sold five planes of the same type to Etihad Airways for about $350 million.
While the government is working on final contours for a strategic divestment of its stake in loss-making Air India, the airline is ready with plans to fly to more overseas destinations.
The pattern of domestic airlines receiving bomb threats to their flights continued for the fourth day as two international flights, one each of Vistara and IndiGo, were targeted in the similar manner on Thursday.
The central government on Monday permitted airlines operating in India to provide in-flight wi-fi services to passengers, according to an official notification.
All the 12 cabin crew members, including two pilots, on board the ill-fated London-bound Air India flight were killed in the Ahmedabad air crash on Thursday.
In little over a year, Air India and IndiGo have announced plans to purchase up to 170 wide-body planes as they bet on ambitious expansion and efforts also continue to make India a global aviation hub. Also, the two carriers' orders usher in European aircraft maker Airbus into the country's wide-body space, which has traditionally been dominated by US major Boeing. If narrow-body aircraft orders of Air India, IndiGo and Akasa Air are added to the list, the order book is well over 1,200 planes and that too in less than 14 months or since February 2023.
A Reuters report stated that the high-profile meeting reflects Ambani's growing influence in global business and diplomacy. Over the years, Qatar Investment Authority (QIA), the country's sovereign wealth fund, has invested in several Reliance ventures.
A week after the devastating Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad claimed 270 lives, investigators on Thursday continued to sift for clues to ascertain the cause, while the government said the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau will decide where to decode the black box of the ill-fated Dreamliner.
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 India Boeing 787-8 crash in Ahmedabad has brought back all traumatic memories.
The claims will include three kinds of liabilities: Damage to the aircraft; loss of lives who were aboard the aircraft; including the crew members; and third-party liability because of loss of lives where the aircraft crashed; and cargo liability.
Air India got its third Boeing 787 Dreamliner on Tuesday from the new North Charleston facility of the US-based manufacturer.
The Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) on Tuesday suspended Air India's Boeing simulator facility in Mumbai after finding certain alleged lapses during a spot check, a DGCA official said. The pilots, who were scheduled to undergo refresher courses at the Mumbai facility, will now not be able to do so.
Board also discussed the modified turnaround plan.
Soon after the takeoff, the pilot of ill-fated Air India aircraft gave a Mayday call to the Ahmedabad air traffic controller.
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.
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.
All these problems were fixed by the airline's and Boeing's technical teams, Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal said in reply to a question.
UN chief Antonio Guterres, US President Donald Trump, his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney were among scores of world leaders who offered condolences to the people of India in wake of the tragic plane crash in Ahmedabad on Thursday.
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.
A local resident of Meghani Nagar in Gujarat's Ahmedabad, who lives close to the site where Air India flight-171 crashed, recounted the horror and described the devastation and horror following the tragic incident.
Air India is keen to raise working capital by selling aircraft.
The Air India plane AI-171 from Ahmedabad to London crashed immediately after take-off from the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Ahmedabad airport on Thursday, as per the Gujarat State Police Control Room.
The 'Maharishi Valmiki International Airport, Ayodhyadham' has become the 68th civil airport terminal in the country to come under the umbrella of the specialised aviation security group of the central force.
They have a minimum travel time of 14 hours and 55 minutes and cover at least 12,189 kms.
The US Federal Aviation Authority has approved Boeing's plan to fix the battery-fire problem in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner fleet.
Full service carrier Vistara will continue to expand and expects to have a total of 70 planes by mid-2024, its chief Vinod Kannan said on Tuesday. The airline, a joint venture between Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, reported an operating profit for the first time since inception in the three months ended December 2022. By the middle of next year, Kannan said it will have a total of 70 aircraft, including 7 Boeing 787s.
Demand for the earlier variant 737NG planes is also expected to pick up due to the grounding of MAX planes.
Vistara has filed for slots at the Delhi airport and is also training pilots as it prepares for operations. The Delhi-London flight is being planned from mid-August, while services to Paris and Franfkurt would be launched later.
Eyeing potential business opportunity, Boeing Corporation is planning to approach the proposed Tata-Singapore Airlines.
