Jet Airways

Indian Airlines Seek Government’s Help To Get Out Of Financial Instability!

AirWhizzNov 22, 2018 No Comments

Indian Airlines Seek Government’s Help To Get Out Of Financial Instability!

Aviation Insider

Airlines are asking the government to help them obtain unsecured credit from oil companies and airports to help them get over operational difficulties, as rising oil prices have threatened their financial stability.

Competition and high demand for air travel is forcing airlines to keep airfares low, which in turn is having a drastic effect on their day to day operational costs.

The Federation Of Indian Airlines (FIA), which consists of Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir, have sent a letter to the government addressing this issue saying that “Airlines are facing challenging times and substantial losses in the domestic environment”.

In the letter, airlines have asked the government to assist them to acquire a penalty-free, one-month unsecured credit from oil companies, as well as state-run Airports Authority of India and private airports.

The plea is the latest signal of the crisis facing airlines in India, where the world’s fastest growth in air travel has created a capacity shortage, while high fuel prices and a weaker rupee squeeze them further.

Base airfares can be as low as Rs 1 in India, while states charge taxes as high as 30% on jet fuel. The rupee has weakened almost 11% this year against the dollar, driving up financing costs on overseas borrowings. Airlines are unable to pass on those costs to the customer to keep their market share.

CRISIL, a renowned global analytics firm, has suggested that airlines will have to increase their current airfares by 12 % if airlines want to recover their losses and have enough to operate their day to day functions.

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Airlines May Soon Be Ranked On The Basis Of Customer Feedback!

AirWhizzNov 20, 2018 No Comments

Airlines May Soon Be Ranked On The Basis Of Customer Feedback!

Aviation Insider

India citizens may soon rank its airlines based on the quality of service they provide to flyers. If this concept is implemented it will be the first country in the world to do so.

The quality will be determined by the ratio of passengers flying with a particular airline and the number of complaints registered against it.

Aviation Minister, Mr. Suresh Prabhu, said this on Monday while launching an upgraded version of the ministry’s aviation portal “Air Seva 2.0”, which promises to make registration of grievances and their redressal faster.

According to Mr. Prabhu, the ministry with the help of the portal will categorise airlines. For this, they will take the help of Quality Council Of India to determine the parameters for ranking airlines.

Airlines ranked lower will have to work to improve their standings as passengers will choose the airlines which are more customer friendly. This way the overall service from airlines is bound to improve.

Mr. Prabhu and his deputy in the ministry, Mr. Jayant Sinha, have always been very proactive on social media. They say that their social media accounts are flooded with complaints from various flyers across the country which made them think about a more systematic process for registering grievances and redressing them.

The next version of the portal, “Air Seva 3.0”, will be launched in a couple of months. It will allow passengers to register for Digi-Yatra, which offers paperless boarding for domestic passengers.

It will kick off in Bangalore and Hyderabad by February, followed by Varanasi, Kolkata, Pune and Vijayawada some months later. Other airports will soon follow suit.

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Tata Looks To Reclaim The Skies With Jet Airways Merger!

AirWhizzNov 15, 2018 No Comments

Tata Looks To Reclaim The Skies With Jet Airways Merger!

Aviation Insider

Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group of companies, is in advanced talks to acquire a significant stake in the troubled airline, Jet Airways

The airline, promoted by entrepreneur Naresh Goyal, has been scouting for investors to tide over its financial difficulties.

According to news reports , The Tata group and Naresh Goyal-promoted Jet Airways are inching towards a two-step transaction the first leg of which could see the merger of Jet with Tata Singapore Airlines. The second step of the deal could involve the purchase of the Goyal family’s stake in the combined entity by Singapore Airlines

The talks between representatives of Tata group, Singapore Airlines (SIA) and the Jet Airways management gathered pace after US private equity giant TPG Capital opted to go slow on its talks to buy a stake in Jet. As per the terms under discussion, Jet Airways will first merge with Tata SIA through a share swap.

The Naresh Goyal family, Etihad, Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines will all become partners in the new company. In the second stage, Singapore Airlines will buy out the shares of the Goyal family, giving them a complete exit. Goyal’s partner Etihad may continue with the venture as minority shareholder.

Buying Jet, with its fleet of 124 aircraft, would return Tata to the forefront of Indian aviation in terms of size, almost 70 years after its first airline was nationalised, and six years after it re-entered the market with two joint ventures, Vistara & Air Asia.

Should a deal with Jet succeed, Tata would gain access to hard-to-get parking slots at Mumbai’s congested airport, most of which are occupied by the 25-year-old airline.

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India Has The Largest Percentage Of Airline Women Pilots In The World!

AirWhizzNov 08, 2018 No Comments

India Has The Largest Percentage Of Airline Women Pilots In The World!

Aviation Insider

According to the latest data released by the International Society Of Women Airline Pilots (ISA+21), India not only has the largest percentage of Women pilots in the world, but the percentage of Indian women pilots is more than double the global average.

Statistics show that the global average of the percentage of women pilots is around 5.4%. In India, the percentage of women pilots is 12.4%. India has a total of 8797 pilots out of which 1092 are women and 385 of these are women commanders or captains.

Globally, the total number of airline pilots is over 1.5 lakh of which 8061 are women out of which 2190 are flight captains.

Here are a few stats about female pilots with airlines in India:

  • IndiGo has the second highest percentage of women pilots at nearly 13.9%. Of the 2,689 pilots that IndiGo employs, 351 are women.
  • Of the 1,867 pilots in Jet Airways, 231 are women (12.4%)
  • SpiceJet has 853 pilots of which 113 are women (13.2%)
  • Air India, country’s pioneer in employing women pilots, has 1,710 pilots of which 217 are women pilots (12.7%).

In fact, IndiGo and Jet Airways are the only two carriers in the world, other than US-based carriers like United Airlines American Airlines, Delta Airlines and Southwest Airlines, where the number of female captains is currently in three digits.

At 299 female captains, United Airlines employs the largest number of women commanders in the world followed by American Airlines at 152 and Southwest at 121. IndiGo has 118 women commanders and Jet Airways 100.

In case you didn’t know, the percentage of female pilots in India has been way above the global average for quite some time now. In a report released by ISA+21 in 2006, the global percentage of women pilots was 5.9%. Back then, the percentage of women airline pilots in India was 11%, which still was double the global average.

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Airlines Under Scanner For Alleged Fixing Of Airfares!

AirWhizzNov 02, 2018 No Comments

Airlines Under Scanner For Alleged Fixing Of Airfares!

Aviation Insider

The Competition Commission of India (CCI) has initiated an inquiry into the pricing of air tickets after it found that airlines were allegedly following a similar pattern while setting tariffs, thus making the process anti-competitive.

Airlines follow a bucket system in pricing their tickets, wherein fares are lower if the ticket is booked in advance. Tariffs increase when the travel is booked closer to the date of departure.

Airlines say that this is a software-based system which takes into account historical booking patterns while pricing the tickets.

CCI, a fair trade regulator, is investigating allegations of similar pricing as well as a simultaneous increase in ticket prices by airlines. The cases pertain to steep fluctuations in airfares during the Jat agitation in Haryana, floods in Chennai, among other instances, in the last few years.

According to CCI chief Mr. Sudhir Mittal, during the Jat riots in Haryana, all airlines decided to increase the price of tickets on the same day. A similar thing happened in 2015 when floods hit Chennai.

The regulator is waiting for a report from the Director General (DG), which is its investigation arm. Generally, cases where the CCI finds evidence of violations of competition norms, DG is detailed to investigate.

Mr. Mittal has said that they have asked the DG to look into the algorithms, used by airlines for determining fares, to ascertain whether airlines coordinated to fix prices or the algorithms function on their own to determine prices.

CCI, which keeps a tab on unfair business practices across all sectors, has the power to penalise entities for anti-competitive ways and direct them to cease operations or desist from indulging in such practices.

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“Lion Air” Flight Crashes In Indonesia,189 Passengers Missing!

AirWhizzOct 30, 2018 No Comments

Indonesia, which was coming to terms with the recent havoc created by an earthquake in the region, has yet again been hit with a tragedy.

Indonesia’s “Lion Air” airplane carrying 189 passengers and crew crashed into the Java Sea on Monday morning, moments after taking off from Jakarta Airport.

Flight JT 610 from Jakarta to the city of Pangkal Pinang, disappeared off the radar 13 minutes after taking off from the Indonesian capital at around 6:20 a.m. The airplane crashed and sunk deep into the sea.

The aircraft carried 178 adult passengers, 1 child and 2 babies. The flight’s crew consisted of Captain Bhavye Suneja and Captain Harino as second in command along with 5 crew members.

According to the Acting  Director Of Civil Aviation, Mr. Pramintohadi Sukarno, search operations are underway and rescue squads have been deployed around Tanjung Karawang, the site where the airplane was seen crashing.

A crisis center has also been established at Terminal 1B of the Jakarta Airport & Pangkal Pinang Airport to help families of the passengers.

Local media reports have said that the preliminary flight data shows a drop in the airplane’s altitude and increase in speed before the transmission got cut. The airplane appears to have plunged into the sea just off the course of Indonesia.

Lion Air hasn’t released an official statement.

The deadly crash of a Lion Air has renewed questions about the safety of Indonesian airline soon after U.S. and European regulators removed prohibitions against them.

Indonesia’s aviation industry has had a shaky past. The United States and the European Union banned its airplanes from their skies in 2007.

Indonesia relies heavily on air transport to connect its thousands of islands but has a poor aviation safety record and has suffered several fatal crashes in recent years.

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Bangalore Airport All Set To Add New Flight Routes This Winter!

AirWhizzOct 27, 2018 No Comments

Bangalore Airport All Set To Add New Flight Routes This Winter!

Aviation Insider

There is some good news for people flying from Bangalore Airport!

Kempegowda International Airport (KIA), operated by Bangalore International Airport Ltd(BIAL), will expand its flight connections with the launch of new domestic and international routes plus the addition of two airlines in the winter schedule, beginning from today. The five-month schedule will be in effect till March 30, 2019.

Budget carriers IndiGo and GoAir along with Air India will launch additional flights from Bangalore to eight international destinations.

Here are all the details about it:

  • IndiGo will operate daily flights to Male, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Hong Kong and Kathmandu internationally and to Udaipur and Prayagraj (Allahabad) domestically
  • Air India is set to commence services to Bangkok and London from the Bangalore airport
  • GoAir, which commenced its international operations this month, will also connect Bangalore with Phuket in Thailand during the winter schedule
  • Air India Express will launch a round-trip flight to Singapore from Bengaluru, flying four times a week, from October 29
  • SpiceJet has plans to connect Kanpur, Gorakhpur and Udaipur with the city
  • Jet Airways will operate flight services from Bengaluru to Aizawl through Guwahati
  • Air India’s regional arm, Alliance Air, will fly to Kolhapur from KIA during the winters
  • The new Airlines set to make their Bangalore debuts are Turkish Cargo and Air India Express

Airlines’ winter schedule in India this year will commence from Saturday mid-night and will go on till March 30 next year.

With this, Bangalore will now connect to 82 destinations (53 domestic and 29 international). BIAL expects Bangalore airport to achieve about 744 aircraft movements per day (659 domestic, 85 international) at the start of winter this year.

It has also said that international flight movements will go up by 17 % while domestic flight movements will grow by 10 %.

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Cathay Pacific Airways Has Suffered The Biggest Airline Data Breach Ever!

AirWhizzOct 26, 2018 No Comments

Cathay Pacific Airways Has Suffered The Biggest Airline Data Breach Ever!

Aviation Insider

Hong Kong based, Cathay Pacific Airways has become the target of the world’s biggest airline data breach after a hacker accessed credit card, passport and personal details of around 9.4 million customers.

The airline came to know about this breach while conducting online security processes. But, they reported this incident on Thursday, almost 7 months after the hack was done.

While passports, addresses and emails were exposed, flight safety wasn’t compromised and there was no evidence that information has been misused, however, there are still no details revealing the origin of the attack.

Cathay Pacific has said the data stolen included names, nationalities, birth dates, phone numbers, addresses, passport, identity card numbers and expired credit card numbers, among other information & said no passwords were compromised. They have been contacting customers to advise them on how to protect themselves.

Cathay’s CEO, Mr. Rupert Hogg has released an apology statement saying that they are sorry for any inconvenience that may be caused due to this data breach. The statement also said that the airline acted immediately to contain the event, commence a thorough investigation with the assistance of a leading cybersecurity firm, and further strengthened their  IT security measures.

Hong Kong’s privacy commissioner expressed serious concern over the leak and said the office will initiate a compliance check with the airline. A dedicated website, infosecurity.cathaypacific.com, provides information about the event and what affected passengers should do next.

Some local lawmakers criticized Cathay for taking seven months to reveal the breach. Lam Cheuk-ting, a member of the Legislative Council’s security committee, told reporters that many people in Hong Kong are angry and the airline should’ve taken the initiative the very first day it found out.

Cathay’s Chief Customer and Commercial Officer Mr.Paul Loo said the airline wanted to have an accurate grasp of the situation and didn’t wish to “create unnecessary panic”.

Impacting more people than the population of Cathay Pacific’s home base of Hong Kong, the hack is in another league as compared to breaches reported by British Airways and Delta Air Lines Inc. this year.

Upon the release of this news, the shares of Cathay Pacific plummeted by almost 6.8 %, causing the airline’s market value to drop by $361 million.

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