Aviation News May 16 2011

Navi Mumbai international airport clears final hurdle

The steering committee of the Union Civil Aviation Ministry on Monday cleared the final hurdle for the Navi Mumbai international airport. The stamp of approval to the master plan was given at a meeting held in New Delhi.
A state official told Mumbai Mirror that the airport will be developed in four phases with 2014, 2017, 2025 and 2031 as deadlines. "We will have a capacity of 60 million passengers per annum by the end of 2031 as against 10 million passengers per annum at Mumbai international airport,'' said T C Benjamin, principal secretary of the State Urban Development Department, who was present at the meeting.
The Civil Aviation Ministry will now hold another meeting with CIDCO, which is the nodal agency for the airport project, within the next two months to select the Request for Proposal (RFQ) - the process of shortlisting developers for the project.
While clearing the airport project, Civil Aviation secretary Nasim Zaidi asked CIDCO to put on hold the proposed demolition of a hillock till the developer is finalised. CIDCO had sought permission to demolish the 92-metre hillock on the airport site.
17/05/11 Mumbai Mirror

Now petrol is dearer than jet fuel

Mumbai: Jet fuel is cheaper than petrol now, but airlines do not appear to be in any mood to cut the fuel surcharge on tickets. With jet fuel or aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices dropping by over 2.9% and petrol prices rising by Rs 5 a litre, it's cheaper now to fuel a jet aircraft than it is to fuel your car. On Monday, the cost per litre of ATF in Delhi was Rs 58.8, while that of petrol was Rs 63.4. In Mumbai the gap between prices of aircraft and car fuel was wider than that of Delhi with ATF costing Rs 59.6 per litre while petrol stood at Rs 68.3 a litre.
The ATF prices went down on Sunday, after international oil rates slumped bringing about the first reduction in ATF costs this year. In Delhi, the ATF price fell by Rs 1,766/kilolitre, while in Mumbai the fall was Rs 1,827. The 3% fall in ATF prices is not going to translate into reduction in fuel surcharge. The reduction in ATF price has come after 14 successive hikes since October, 2010, when international crude oil prices started soaring.
But there is no respite for the passenger. If you are planning a last-minute summer holiday and have not booked your airline tickets yet, then the only good news is that fuel surcharge will not shoot up till the month end. Airfare still be on the higher side with the peak season demand influencing the prices.
16/05/11 Times of India

Maharaja in chains

The biggest mistake relating to Air India was the decision to merge the erstwhile Indian Airlines into the flagship carrier. In 2007, in its report on the national carriers, Accenture had highlighted two factors as being responsible for their sub-optimal performance: an ageing fleet and the fact that the two existed individually.
The report had gone on to say that merger of the two entities and replacement of the ageing fleet would result in a profit of Rs 1,000 crore in the first year itself. Instead, in the three years following the merger in 2007 we have seen losses escalate from Rs 1,200 crore in the first to Rs 2,600 crore in the second to Rs 5,500 crore in the third. Each time, the management of the airline blamed the losses either on high fuel prices or intense competition or some other factor. The inescapable fact is that the airline today has accumulated losses of Rs 16,000 crore.

A new fleet was indeed acquired for the airline but with almost no planning. When an airline buys expensive aircraft such as the Boeing 777 that Air India acquired, route and fleet planning often starts six months before the aircraft start arriving. Instead, we had an extraordinary situation where Air India could not take delivery of three aircraft that had to remain parked at Boeing's factory for more than three months as Air India did not have enough trained pilots and cabin crew.
Again, when Arvind Jadhav took over as managing director of Air India he quashed the recruitment of additional cabin crew after the process for it had been nearly completed. As a result, another eight months were spent hiring cabin crew. During this period hundreds of flights had to be either cancelled or were delayed, not because of a lack of pilots or planes but because of a lack of crew.
29/05/11 Rajiv Pratap Rudy/Business Today

New promotion from Malaysia Airlines

Taxing times for cabin crew of Air India flight

Delhi: It might sound preposterous but it did happen. Recently, to operate its flight from Sharjah to Chennai, Air India diverted four cabin crew members, who were scheduled to operate on Delhi- Mumbai flight, to Dubai. And what was worse, at Dubai airport, the airline hired a private taxi to send these crew members to Sharjah international airport.
The incident happened on May 8 and the reason behind it is not clear yet. "On May 8, four cabin crew members who were assigned to Delhi-Mumbai flight were suddenly asked in the evening to operate on Delhi-Dubai flight and then go to Sharjah by taxi as there was no cabin crew to operate the flight from Sharjah. Ironically, there were no enough vacant seats available in the aircraft and one of the crew members had to take a flight attendant's seat upto Dubai," said sources in Air India.
The cabin crew members left Delhi for Dubai by flight AI995 at 8:45 pm on May 8 and reached Dubai after four hours. They then took around one and a half hours to reach Sharjah in taxi and flew back the same night via Kochi and Bangalore to reach Chennai at 11 am (Indian time) on May 9. "All this resulted in the crew members putting in 16 hours of duty which is five hours more than the stipulated time limit by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) thereby being a clear violation of Flight Duty Time Limit norms, " sources in Air India said.
"It was not only a matter of fatigue setting in for the crew members. If any untoward incident would have happened, these crew members would have inadvertently become part of a criminal case," said a senior Air India official.
17/05/11 Surender Sharma/MiD DAY

SpiceJet flights to Chennai, Hyderabad & Ahmedabad soon

Nagpur: Air passengers demanding direct flights from Nagpur to southern metro cities have reason to cheer. SpiceJet has proposed direct early morning flights between Nagpur-Chennai, Nagpur-Hyderabad and most likely Nagpur-Ahmedabad from Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport by the year-end.
With SpiceJet's plans to start flights to Chennai and Ahmedabad, the Orange City will be directly air-linked with both cities for the first time.
On Sunday, SpiceJet started its flights from Nagpur to Bangalore and Delhi, adding more daily options for flyers to both cities. The flight will be operated from Delhi and Bangalore and will have a halt at Nagpur in both directions. The airline will fly its new generation Boeing 737-800 (189 seater) aircraft on this route and the fares (inclusive of all taxes and charges) will begin from Rs 2,585 on both sectors.
SpiceJet chief executive officer Neil Mills said, "Nagpur has become a major commercial and political centre for Maharashtra, besides being a popular tourist destination. With Mihan, the city has shown significant demand for cost effective and convenient travel option, which is why SpiceJet has selected Nagpur to start its flights."
17/05/11 Sachin Dravekar/Times of India

Court seeks to know causes of Air India strike

New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Monday sought an explanation from the government over the causes of a 10-day strike which crippled the domestic operations of national carrier Air India, forcing it to suffer accumulated losses of Rs.150 crore.
A division bench of Chief Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Sanjiv Khanna issued notice to the government, also asking it to state how much money has been lost in strikes in the flag carrier since 1990s.
'The nation wants to know what factors are afflicting the national carrier Air India. In order to set those controversies at rest, we are prime facie of the opinion that all the circumstances leading up to the strike should be considered and decided by treating the case as a PIL (public interest litigation),' the bench said, hearing a case referred by another bench, which termed it a matter of public interest.
'Disputes between the parties have fostering before the National Industrial Tribunal since 1990. So its high time now when the nation should know why the dispute is not coming to end,' the bench observed.
The court was hearing the petition filed by the Indian Commercial Pilots' Association (ICPA), the union of over 800 pilots which went on strike on April 26, seeking withdrawal of its appeal against the single judge's April 27 order to call off the strike as the pilots have joined their duties.
16/05/11 IANS/Sify

Manpower shortage delays cargo clearance

Chennai: It will take at least one more month to bring back air cargo operations at the city airport to normalcy because of manpower shortage, say clients and customs agents.
Malfunctioning of an integrated cargo operations software at the Customs House coupled with administrative chaos has led to cargo pileup since the last week of April. With the Airports Authority of India and Bhadra International, who have been given the ground handling operations, bringing in some infrastructure improvements, the situation is looking up. However, clients and customs agents believe that the improvements are not enough to get the operations back to normal.
Though close to 600 tonnes of consignments that had piled up through the last month have been cleared, customs house agents said lack of coordination and manpower is hampering the efforts. At least 200 employees are required for effective handling of consignments, but there are hardly 100 of them.
17/05/11 Arun Janardhanan/Times of India

Air India seeks ministry nod to issue Rs.5,500 crore bonds

Aviation fuel price balm after petrol blow

Smuggler may have to pay for plane damage

Spicejet adds Nagpur on service map