India's office market was very active in 2024 with gross leasing of workspace witnessing a 19 per cent increase to a record 885.2 lakh square feet across eight major cities, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The gross leasing or absorption of office space stood at 745.6 lakh square feet in the preceding year, data from real estate consultant Cushman & Wakefield (C&W) showed.
Airfares on major domestic routes such as Kolkata-Bagdogra, Delhi-Bengaluru, and Delhi-Mumbai have witnessed an increase of up to 12.7 per cent year-on-year (Y-o-Y) in May this year, according to data by Thomas Cook (India) and SOTC Travel. The recent increase in aviation turbine fuel prices, rupee depreciation, reduction of flights by key players, and grounding of planes due to engine supply issues have contributed to the rise in airfares, said aviation industry experts. However, the data also shows that summer airfares on key routes such as Delhi-Leh and Delhi-Kolkata have significantly decreased due to the introduction of new flights.
From highways connecting once-remote regions to aviation networks carrying millions, India's infrastructure story is one of transformation.
Airfares have nearly doubled in a matter of days on routes hit by the cancellation of 200 weekly flights linking Mumbai airport to 12 cities. The fares have soared as high as 193 per cent following a recent government order to cancel flights to ease "persistent congestion" that was causing delays. Aside from the reduction in flights on 12 routes, two destinations - Hubli and Jabalpur - have lost connectivity with Mumbai since last week, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium's data reviewed
Tovino Thomas' big budget action entertainer is a middling, tonally inconsistent watch that keeps you hooked, observes Arjun Menon.
Indian customers will have wider travel options as airlines introduce new flights from the end of March. While Malaysian Airlines and Turkish Airlines are resuming passenger flights to India after a gap of two years, Air France-KLM and Lufthansa Group will scale up their existing service in a graded manner in the summer schedule. Emirates, the largest foreign airline operating in India, too, is looking to restore its pre-Covid-19 schedule of 172 flights per week.
On Thursday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had urged citizens to observe Janta curfew by not going out of their homes from 7 am to 9 am on Sunday amid novel coronavirus pandemic.
Seeking to assuage pilot shortage concerns, Akasa Air's chief executive Vinay Dube on Friday said the carrier has sufficient pilots and flyers should not expect any flight cancellations. "We have plenty of pilots. We have given numbers like 700 in the past. "I don't think this is something from an Akasa perspective people need to worry about because we have got this plan in place where we have pilots not just for our current set of aircraft but we have got pilots for the foreseeable future in terms of growth," Dube told PTI at the sidelines of a CII event.
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 announced up to 50 per cent reduction in monthly allowances of its employees, who have a gross monthly salary of more than Rs 25,000.
Despite partial restoration of salaries, pilots across airlines remain dissatisfied, throwing challenges for managers.
Over 70 per cent of Jet's fleet has been grounded, leading to massive cancellations.
At least 20 to 30 departures are being cancelled daily from metros and key airports including Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
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.
Increasing cases of aviators in India complaining of fatigue and in some cases leading to death have spurred the DGCA to bring in draft rules to reduce stress.
From a surge in airfares to rattled aircraft lessors to thousands of employees staring at uncertainty, it has been a month of continued turbulence since cash-strapped Go First suspended flights from May 3. As the government and other stakeholders hope that Go First restarts operations at the earliest, plans are being worked out for the budget airline's revival. A section of Go First staff are optimistic about restarting of operations, another section are pessimistic about the airline's future course considering what had happened to erstwhile Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways, according to employees who spoke to PTI.
Currently, Vistara has more than 22 planes and operates around 850 flights every week.
Beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines on Wednesday announced further reduction in its flight schedule and said its promoter Vijay Mallya will meet the pilots agitating over delayed salary on Thursday.
Two Air India flights from the capital were cancelled on Saturday due to an agitation called by a section of the national airlines' pilots to protest the up to 50 per cent reduction in their productivity-linked incentives (PLIs). Air India's flights to Mumbai and Kabul were cancelled this morning as the pilots did not report for duty, airline officials said. The passengers of the cancelled flight to Mumbai have been accommodated in the next flight.
The original points deduction meant Everton dropped from 14th in the standings into the relegation zone with four points. The club filed an appeal against the initial deduction, which they labelled "wholly disproportionate and unjust".
Jet has pulled out flights from Northeast states and also cancelled its Srinagar flight, leading to reduction in capacity.
Though the civil aviation sector accounts for only two per cent of the global carbon emission, the industry has conducted sufficient research on the usage of alternative fuels, from the prospective of both environment and cost.
Falling demand compels domestic carriers to slash capacity by 10 per cent.
Most reported unruly passenger incidents were classified as level 1, or intentional non-compliance with safety regulations like not wearing face masks, not wearing seat belts.
British Airways covers over 150 destinations in 75 countries while in India the carrier operates 49 flights a week from London's Heathrow airport to Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
India's largest airline has also told its crew members -- who are working on flights connecting India with East Asian countries like Thailand and Singapore -- to wear N95 masks at all times when they are on ground.
Coordination between defence and civilian authorities has freed up airspace for commercial airlines in India, resulting in routes becoming shorter and costs coming down, apart from mitigating pollution. "Due to various restrictions of the military, only about 58 per cent of the Indian airspace was being utilised. It is close to 70 per cent now," said an official of the Airports Authority of India (AAI). Officials of the AAI said to date 119 routes had been shortened. Sources said since December 2020 the cumulative savings of airlines had been close to Rs 200 crore while there was a reduction in emission of around 45,000 tonnes of carbon.
Aviation Working Group (AWG), a global aviation leasing body comprising major planemakers and lessors, on Monday further downgraded India as lessors have not been able to repossess their planes from Go First more than four months after the airline filed for insolvency. The leasing cost stands as a prominent expense for Indian airlines. With AWG's downgrade, it is likely that lessors will increase the aircraft leasing rates for Indian carriers.
Asserting that the situation in Kuwait was "absolutely normal" despite the ongoing US-led war in Iraq, civil aviation secretary K Roy Paul hinted on Wednesday a reduction in fares of flights from and to India
'There are smaller cities, which are very attractive to fly'.
The extended range of the missile which is part of the Strategic Forces Command will give a variety of options to the planners during times of conflict.
Sources at Mumbai airport said seat occupancy has declined from around 70-72 per cent to 60-64 per cent in last three-four days as passengers are postponing or cancelling trips.
While there is no concrete proposal as of now, possible options include raising funds through securitisation of ticket levy and reduction in number of subsidised seats on routes with higher demand.
It was August 2007. Tata Steel was turning 100. Jamshedpur, its hometown, had an air of celebration. The line-up for the special event included the launch of Air Deccan's commercial flight connecting Kolkata and Jamshedpur, and release of Russi Lala's new book, Romance of Tata Steel. There was also the screening of The Spirit of Steel, a 20-minute documentary directed by Zafar Hai showcasing Tata Steel's legacy, and a corporate anthem penned by Javed Akhtar and composed by Shankar, Ehsaan and Loy.
The FAC found that the failure happened when the Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle rocket's cryogenic engine was to kick in to take the rocket forward.
However, the reduction in ATF prices will provide some cushion to airlines engaged in a protracted price war have lost control over pricing in one the world's most price sensitive domestic markets.
Hit by the third wave of the COVID-19 pandemic and soaring fuel prices, airlines are flying towards record losses with a likely loss of a whopping Rs 20,000 crore for the full fiscal year, warns a report. The airlines are flying towards their steepest-ever net loss of over Rs 20,000 crore this fiscal, which will be 44 per cent more than Rs 13,853 crore they bled last fiscal, Crisil said in a report. This will push back the industry's recovery beyond fiscal 2023, the report based on three large listed airlines--Indigo, Spicejet, and Air India--which together command 75 per cent of the domestic traffic, warned.
Reliance's hydrocarbon business was adversely impacted due to reduction in demand for refined products and petrochemicals.
Divestment-bound Air India's pilot unions have rejected the paltry five per cent rollback in their salary cuts and warned of "industrial action" if there is no "substantial" reversal in their paycuts. In a joint letter to Air India chairman and managing director Rajiv Bansal on Thursday, the Indian Pilots' Guild (IPG) and the Indian Commercial Pilots Association (ICPA) said, "(The) pittance in the form of a five per cent decrease in the current wage cut is an outright insult, its sting magnified in light of our unwavering support and trust in this company." They said this "generosity" amounts to a reduction of about 3 per cent in the current gross pay cut for pilots. In April, Air India had reduced its pilots' salary by up to 70 per cent to partially offset the impact of the coronavirus pandemic on its finances.
