2009: A year of rough landings for Indian aviation

New Delhi: Year 2009 has been one of the most turbulent for the Indian aviation sector. The year was marred by strikes, losses and crashes.
However, 2010 may turn out to be the exact opposite and may finally see the aviation sector emerge out of the clouds.
Big bosses of aviation will only be too glad to see the back of 2009. It was a year in which India’s aviation sector went through one of its toughest periods.
The airlines had entered the year, riding a wave of protests from employees who were being sacked to cut costs and the same thread continued in 2009 as well.
Two of the country's biggest airlines—Jet Airways and Air India— were literally grounded when their pilots went on strike in 2009.
Both the airlines suffered big losses due to the strike, bringing forth the issue of manpower management in an industry, which was seeing a downturn after many years of boom.
While Jet finally managed to settle the pilot issue, Air India's troubles were more serious.

The toll in the aviation sector is expected to cross the Rs 10,000 crore mark this year.
To survive the down turn, the airlines not only chopped employees but also aircraft capacity fell by almost 25 per cent, as many shifted to an all economy model.
Jet Airways launched Jet Konnect while Kingfisher increased the number of economy seats in its airline. Utimately almost 70 per cent of the capacity in the sector was in the economy segment, but it was of little help.
The year also saw helicopter flights carrying VIPs crashing like ninepins and several near miss incidents with the president's helicopter. The government was ultimately forced to bring in new stricter norms for helicopter flights.
However, towards the end of the year, the airlines finally got some relief. Passengers were flocking back to the airports, flight occupancy was up and interestingly even fares were firming up, which meant that the airlines could finally see some profitability in 2010.
30/12/09 Arijit Banerjee/NDTV.com

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Dec 2009