Aviation in 2009: Of losses and strikes

After its spiral dive last year, the Indian aviation industry noticed slight signs of improvement at the fag end of 2009 that also saw a major helicopter crash in which Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S R Reddy perished and several near-miss incidents.
The combined losses of all airlines in 2008-09 was over a massive Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion).
Though no accidents involving scheduled carriers occurred, the year saw the Y S R tragedy. There were also several near-miss incidents, including one involving the IAF choppers carrying President Pratibha Patil and an Air India plane.
The operations of Jet Airways and Air India remained paralysed for several days by separate strikes called by their pilots in September to press for their demands.
The major dip in passenger traffic caused by the economic recession, low business traffic and high ticket prices
Barring only two carriers -- IndiGo and Paramount -- all scheduled airlines continued to post huge losses.
Air India's financial troubles saw the government coming to its aid and allocating Rs 800 crore (Rs 8 billion) as the first tranche of equity infusion in the national carrier. It also approved a Jet Airways proposal to raise $400 million from foreign institutional investors.
Modernisation work at metro and non-metro airports continued, but imposition of development charges and hiking of airport charges by private airport developers at some major airports coming under criticism.
The pace of work on upgrading and modernisation of 35 non-metro airports slowed down due to a decline in air traffic, with only nine expected to be completed by March.
Work on another five airports is likely to be completed by 2010-end and the remaining 26 by 2012.
The government had last year approved the FDI limits in civil aviation sector of up to 49 per cent on automatic route and up to 100 per cent for NRIs, besides up to 74 per cent for non-scheduled operators and 100 per cent for cargo, among other things.
While global fuel prices maintained a high but stable rate at $70-80 a barrel, a key factor which could have led to the airlines controlling their losses was a shift to the all-economy, no-frill model, with Jet Airways launching its second subsidiary, Jet Konnect.
Air India announced plans to follow suit by converting some planes to all economy configurations, but that is yet to see the light of the day.
30/12/09 Amitabha Roychowdhury/PTI/Rediff

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Categories: Indian Aviation- In General Dec 2009