The Centre on Thursday (October 29) announced several changes to the bidding parameters in the Air India disinvestment process. These include changing of the value on the basis of which the bid is made by a potential investor, upfront cash deposit amount, and extension of deadline for submitting expressions of interest.
What are the changes done to Air India’s bidding parameters and Why have these changes been made?
New Delhi: Breaking the glass ceiling of Indian aviation, a woman has become the CEO of a scheduled passenger Indian carrier for the first time with the government appointing Harpreet A De Singh to the position for Air India’s regional subsidiary Alliance Air.
Singh is currently AI’s executive director (flight safety). Captain Nivedita Bhasin, one of AI’s most senior commanders currently flying Boeing 787 Dreamliner, will be the new ED (flight safety) in place of Singh.
AI chairman and managing director Rajiv Bansal issued an an order on Friday saying Singh “will hold the charge of Alliance Air CEO post till further orders.” Captain Nivedita Bhasin has also been asked to head several other departments given her experience.
Alliance Air is not being sold off with the Air India-AI Express-AISATS combine and will remain a PSU for now. AI’s old Boeing 747s will be transferred to Alliance Air, which currently has a fleet of turboprops, if the Maharaja gets a buyer and is privatised.
Harpreet Singh was the first woman pilot to be selected by erstwhile Air India in 1988. However, she could not fly due to health reasons and has been very active in the area of flight safety. Singh has headed the Indian Women Pilot Association where Bhasin and other senior women commanders like Captain Kshamta Bajpai are seen as role models by budding pilots.
30/10/20 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
Chennai: Air India achieved a historic milestone of flying over one million passengers into and from the country ever since the Coronavirus-induced lockdown.
From the launch of Vande Bharat flights on May 7, Air India carried over one million passengers covering 74 destinations in 54 countries and operating 7,791 flights till date under Vande Bharat Mission and Air Transport Bubble arrangements, said a statement. Going by the sheer number of passengers and number of countries covered, this is one of the biggest evacuation exercise by any civil airline. A further 1,600 flights are planned till December.
Air India had risen to the occasion to fly two Jumbo aircrafts to evacuate stranded nationals from Wuhan in January, thus scripting probably the first medical evacuation flight of this magnitude. Since then, the saga of evacuation flights continues... Tokyo, Paris, Rome, Tel Aviv, Frankfurt, London and eventually to most corners of the world, where no Indian carrier has ever flown into.
Air India has ramped up its operations to countries like the UK, connecting London with several cities in India, like Cochin and Goa. It is set to launch flights to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia in November under the Air Bubble system.
31/10/20 New Indian Express
New Delhi: The government is likely to extend the deadline to bid for Air India till December 14 and also give flexibility to a potential investor to decide on the humongous debt with the national carrier, a source said. The deadline to bid for buying out Air India ends on October 30. The flexibility to potential investors on the quantum of the Rs 60,074 crore debt that they want to absorb will replace the current condition of the buyer taking over more than a third of the debt and transferring the rest to a special purpose vehicle.
The source said the Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism (AISAM) has cleared the extension of the deadline to December 14 to give time to potential investors to raise queries on the changes being made in the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM). As per the Air India EoI floated by DIPAM in January, of the airline's total debt of Rs 60,074 crore as of March 31, 2019, the buyer would be required to absorb Rs 23,286.5 crore, while the rest would be transferred to Air India Assets Holding Ltd (AIAHL), a special purpose vehicle.
The government is seeking to sell 100 per cent of its stake in the state-owned national airline, including Air India's 100 per cent shareholding in AI Express Ltd and 50 per cent in Air India SATS Airport Services Pvt Ltd. Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) Secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey had said that potential investors in Air India have given feedback that due to the uncertainty created by COVID-19 in the aviation sector, the debt should not be fixed at the Expression of Interest (EoI) stage.
29/10/20 PTI/ETNowNews.com
New Delhi: Hong Kong has banned Air India flights from Mumbai till November 10 after a few passengers on its flight earlier this week tested positive for COVID-19 post arrival, a senior government official said on Friday.
This is the fourth time that Air India flights from India have been banned by the Hong Kong government for bringing passengers who tested positive for the infection after arrival.
Previous bans were on the airline's Delhi-Hong Kong flights during September 20-October 3 and August 18-August 31 and October 17-October 30.
Passengers from India can arrive in Hong Kong only if they have a COVID-19 negative certificate from a test done within 72 hours prior to the journey, according to rules issued by the Hong Kong government in July.
Moreover, all international passengers are required to undergo a post-flight COVID-19 test at the Hong Kong airport.
Besides India, a pre-flight COVID-19 negative certificate is mandatory for all passengers from Bangladesh, Ethiopia, France, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, Nepal, Pakistan, the Philippines, Russia, South Africa, the UK and the US, according to the Hong Kong government's rules.
An airline operating a flight to Hong Kong from these countries has to submit a form before departure, stating that all passengers onboard have COVID-19 negative certificates.
"A few passengers who travelled on Air India's Mumbai-Hong Kong flight earlier this week tested positive for COVID-19 post arrival at Hong Kong," the senior government official said.
"Subsequently, the Mumbai-Hong Kong flights have been barred from October 28 to November 10 by the Hong Kong government," the official added.
28/10/20 PTI/Times of India
Exactly a week after its Delhi-Guangzhou flight was postponed, Air India will operate one to Wuhan on October 30, the Indian embassy in Beijing announced. Wuhan is the city from where COVID-19 emerged late last year.
The flight, which will be operated on the Delhi-Wuhan-Delhi sector, is the sixth of the Vande Bharat Mission series, which the carrier is operating to not only bring back Indians stranded in the Hubei capital back to familiar shores but also help those with work visas to return to their jobs in China. The previous five flights flew to Guangzhou, Shanghai and Ningbo.
In February this year, Air India operated three flights to airlift 647 Indian citizens stranded in the central Chinese city, as the virus raged on in the country. This will be India’s first flight to the Chinese 'Comeback City' since June, when it was confirmed as safe from the coronavirus and saw the curbs lifted.
Passengers arriving in Wuhan will be required to undergo a standard two-week quarantine in designated hotels. Those arriving in Delhi will be subject to a seven-day institutional quarantine and then a week of home quarantine.
27/10/20 Outlook
Mumbai: Ahead of Diwali, Air India is bullish that the Passenger Load Factor will reach up to 50 per cent of the pre-covid levels, said Rajiv Bansal, chairman and managing director of Air India Limited.
Last November, Air India carried 15.65 lakh passengers. Air India is operating over 50 per cent of its fleet. Speaking to BusinessLine, Bansal said the current PLF is at least 40 per cent of pre covid times. “We are confident that with Diwali round the corner, there will be several people who would want to go back to their hometowns, so we are expecting PLFs to go above 50 per cent in November.”
According to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation’s August data, Indian carriers saw degrowth of 57.48 per cent between the January-August 2020 as against 943.58 lakhs during the corresponding period.
Though, in August 2020, Air India’s PLF grew by approximately 13 per cent on a month on month basis, thus, showing some green shoots for the national carrier.
This trend can be corroborated with booking trends from OTAs like Ixigo. Aloke Bajpai, CEO & Co-founder, Ixigo said that its booking data trends show that the upcoming festive season will retain a healthy travel appetite this year as well. “With confidence in air travel rising, we have seen a 40 per cent increase in advance bookings for festive travel, in the last three weeks.
According to the October data of Ixigo, flight routes Mumbai to Delhi, Bengaluru to Delhi, Delhi to Mumbai, Hyderabad to Delhi, and Bengaluru to Mumbai have shown tremendous growth.
This trend might remain the same in November as well, said Bansal. “While the traffic between metros will grow, we also expect traffic from metro cities to tier 1 cities routes to see the highest traffic.”
26/10/20 Forum Gandhi/Business Line
Pathankot: The Civil Aviation Ministry has extended the frequency of the Pathankot to New Delhi and return flight from earlier three days a week to daily at the insistence of Gurdaspur MP Sunny Deol. The flight is operated by Alliance Airlines.
Officials said the development would help boost the sagging economy of the parliamentary constituency and also parts of neighbouring states of J&K and HP.
Hospitality honchos, too, are happy as the Punjab Infrastructural Development Board has started work on turning the twin islands of Musharba and Kalara, located in the Ranjit Sagar Dam lake, into major world-class water sports and tourist hubs.
In 2014, then Dy CM Sukhbir Singh Badal had flown in hoteliers from New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune in a special flight to convince them about the area’s tourism potential. However, the project failed due to little or no connectivity of the city with other parts of the country.
“Highways have been constructed in recent years. This meant that tourists directly drove to the neighbouring states of J&K and HP without making a stop-over in the town as was the case earlier. This resulted in a massive loss of revenue for the nearly 100-odd hotels in the city,” said Anil Vasudeva, former mayor of Pathankot.
On June 23, Deol had written a letter to Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri requesting him to improve air connectivity “because he had to face flak from the business community of his constituency.”
26/10/20 Ravi Dhaliwal/Tribune
Mangaluru: Air India has announced resumption of flights between Mangaluru and Bengaluru starting Monday. Flight AI 575 will depart from Bengaluru at 4pm and reach Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) at 5.20pm. Flight AI 576 will depart MIA at 6pm and reach Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru at 7.20pm. The flights will operate on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Fares start at Rs 2,342, a communique from the airline stated.
24/10/20 Times of India
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The ministerial panel headed by Home Minister Amit Shah on disinvestment of national carrier Air India will meet on Saturday to review the progress made so far and future course of action. Among key issues to be on the table are extending deadline for expression of interest (EoI) that expires on October 31.
"The meeting would be virtual and the agenda for the same has been circulated among those concerned. The progress on disinvestment would be discussed," said an official source.
The meeting is crucial given that no private investor has so far shown keen interest in acquiring the debt-laden carrier forcing the government to extend bidding date thrice after the process started in January this year.
The government had invited bids from private players in January to sell its entire 100% stake in the airline and its subsidiary Air India Express, besides 50% in Air India SATS Airport Services Private Ltd, the joint venture company for ground-handling. Sweetening the deal, the debt the new owner would be required to take over had been reduced to Rs 23,286 crore.
As per the EoI document floated by Department of Investment and Public Asset Management (DIPAM) early this year, Air India had a total debt of Rs 60,074 crore as of March 31, 2019. Further, the buyer was required to absorb Rs 23,286 crore with the remaining debt to be transferred to Air India Assets Holding Ltd (AIAHL), a special purpose vehicle.
The proposal was considered far more lucrative compared to previous attempt when government wanted to sell 76% of its equity stake while retaining the residual ownership.
"The Group of Ministers (GoM) would also discuss the quantum of loan the prospective owner would be required to take," the person quoted above said.
23/10/20 Nirbhay Kumar/Business Today
New Delhi: India and Germany have finally reached an equitable agreement on flights to be operated by airlines of both countries under the air bubble agreement. Lufthansa will now operate 10 weekly flights — four to and from Delhi and three each to and from Mumbai and Bengaluru. Air India will operate seven flights a week with five to and from Delhi and two from Bengaluru.
A disagreement had arisen between India and Germany last month due to the disparity in the number of flights being operated by Lufthansa and AI. A senior Indian aviation official had then said while AI was operating three to four flights a week to and from Germany, Lufthansa was having 20 flights here. India had last month offered seven flights a week to Lufthansa which was not accepted by them.
As a result of this disagreement, Lufthansa had cancelled all its planned India flights between September 30 and October 20. Germany had withdrawn permission for AI to operate flights to Frankfurt in the first half of October. Due to this the Maharaja had cancelled all the 12 flights that were operate from October 1 to 14.
Now, with India and Germany finalising a more equitable number of flights — Lufthansa 10 weekly and AI 7 instead of the earlier AI 3-4 weekly and Lufthansa 20 — flights will resume.
Aviation minister H S Puri tweeted on Wednesday saying: “Flights between India and Germany recommence under air bubble arrangement. Lufthansa will operate from Delhi (4 days), Mumbai (3 days) and Bengaluru (3 days). Air India will operate 5 weekly flights from Delhi and 2 every week from Bengaluru to Frankfurt.”
Under the air bubble agreement with Lufthansa and Air France, Indian passengers were supposed to travel only between India and the EU on these airlines. The special arrangement conditions meant an Indian passenger eligible to travel under current rules could not fly from India to Germany and then take a connecting flight from there to North America. However, the EU carriers were taking that traffic also and were asked to abide by the terms of the air bubble.
21/10/20 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
One may not associate the aggressiveness with the state carrier, but Air India has surely taken the lead when it comes to operating on one of the busiest international routes this winter
The airline will fly to London from eight Indian cities, starting January 1. These include Kochi and Goa. While Air India had started services from the two popular tourist destinations - Kochi in August and Goa from mid-October - this is the first time they feature in the carrier's winter schedule.
The Kochi service began as part of the Vande Bharat repatriate exercise.
While the main hubs of Delhi and Mumbai continue to feature in Air India's schedule, others include Amritsar, Kolkata, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru.
"It is very radical and innovative, in several ways. It illustrates the saying 'never let a serious crisis go to waste,'" says Craig Jenks, President and Founder, Airline/Aircraft Projects, a consultancy based in New York.
Air India surely is. While it had the monopoly over Vande Bharat Mission flights when the repatriation exercise took off, the airline continues to be the dominant player in bagging rights under the air travel bubble arrangement. At present, India has these arrangements with 18 countries, with Bangladesh and Ukraine being the latest additions.
Now the national airline wants to dominate the London route, not just from the hubs of Delhi and Mumbai, but also from the smaller cities.
"For decades, Air India could not / would not do most of these routes. Because their connecting hubs were/are in Mumbai and more recently, much more in Delhi," points out Jenks. The practice was to feed the hubs of Delhi and Mumbai with traffic from smaller cities through domestic flights.
The additional connections will make up for the loss on business travel, especially on the Mumbai-London route, and cater to the pent-up demand from Indian expats. It helps that on October 22, the government further relaxed restrictions on visa, including those for OCI and PIO cardholders.
Jenks said for decades, Air India was serving the rest of India to London by connecting passengers via Mumbai or Delhi. “This was not popular with passengers.” But now the airline is looking to serve expats (Ahmedabad and Amritsar) and tourists (Goa and Kochi) by introducing new routes, according to him.
23/10/20 Prince Mathews Thomas/Moneycontrol.com
New Delhi: Air India pilots have sought a follow-up meeting with Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to put forth the problems being faced by them.
The Indian Commercial Pilots Association and the Indian Pilots Guild have put in a written request to Puri in this regard.
"During our last meetings with you on 16th July & then on 30th August 2020, you graciously gave us the opportunity to put forth the problems being faced by us Air India pilots as well as the Indian aviation sector in general. We would like to thank you again for taking time out of your busy schedule to give us a patient hearing as well as a positive outlook especially in view of the tribulations caused by the Covid-19 pandemic," the Air India pilots said.
"Since May 25th 2020, under your steady hand, the domestic operations have seen an upward trend towards 60 per cent normalcy. India has also established travel bubbles with 13 countries so far. The historic Vande Bharat flights continue to run smoothly & provide extensive worldwide connectivity. There is a visible trend towards recovery for the Indian aviation market," the pilots wrote.
22/10/20 Daijiworld
Air India regional unit Alliance Air posted its first ever operating profit in the year immediately prior to the global pandemic hitting air travel demand.
In a social media post, the Indian regional carrier flags an operating profit of RS65 crore ($8.8 million) for the the year ending 31 March 2020 - which it says is its first profit since its inception.
A report in the Times of India, reposted by Alliance Air, cites the airline saying it would also have posted a profit at a net level but for new accounting standards which dragged it to a net loss of Rs201 crore for the year.
Alliance Air was established in the mid-1990s as a regional unit of Indian Airlines, which was ultimately merged with Air India. Alliance Air operates domestic flights as an Air India subsidiary using a fleet of ATR turboprops.
Airline Allied Services, the Air India unit which includes Alliance Air, is being moved to a new holding company and is not part of continued efforts to divest Air India.
The profit was achieved prior to the main impact of the coronavirus crisis. India suspended domestic flights on 25 March as part of efforts to counter the pandemic, before lifting restrictions two months later.
22/10/20 Graham Dunn/Flight Global
Panaji: A 30-year old man with a history of mental illness gave passengers aboard Air India’s Delhi Goa flight a mid-air scare after he began to act strangely and claimed that there were terrorists on the flight. The passenger, identified as Zia Ul Haq, was apprehended by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) when the flight landed at Goa International Airport and was handed over to Goa Police.
While flight AI 883 was enroute to Goa, around 3:15pm, the man started behaving strangely and creating a commotion on the flight. According to the complaint filed by Air India’s cabin crew, Haq claimed that he was a police officer with the Special Cell.
“There are terrorists in this flight and I am from special cell,” said Haq said aboard the flight, a remark that sparked panic aboard the flight. The captain of the flight, Kapil Raina radioed Goa ATC and informed them about the presence of an unruly passenger.
The ATC in turn quickly informed the airport security control room requesting security assistance to hand over Haq to local police.
“As soon as the flight landed, immediately the quick reaction team (QRT) rushed to the aero bridge and apprehended the passenger. His pat down search was done and it was found clear. There after he was sent to Dabolim Airport police station with an escort of CISF QRT as well as Air India security staff,” said an Airports Authority of India official.
Initial investigation shows that Haq has a past history of mental illness and was seeking treatment at Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences, New Delhi. Haq was medically examined at the state run hospital in Goa and has been admitted at the Institute of Psychology and Human Behaviour based on the orders of the magistrate.
22/10/20 Newton Sequeira/Times of India
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Another Air India repatriation flight left Phnom Penh International Airport yesterday, returning a new wave of Indians stranded in the Kingdom amid the pandemic.
The flight was seen off by the new Indian Ambassador to Cambodia, Devyani Khobragade, who was on hand to make sure the process went smoothly.
Second secretary of the Indian Embassy Subba Rao said: “162 passengers boarded the flight, consisting of 161 Indians and one Cambodian.”
“The Indian passengers on board were chosen to return to India for a variety of reasons. Some were stranded after losing their jobs in Cambodia, some returned for personal emergencies and others needed urgent medical treatment,” he said.
“We will review the situation and assess whether we need to arrange more flights in the future. It will depend on the number of requests we receive and the reasons behind the requests,” added Rao.
“All the 162 passengers paid for their own flights and related expenses to return to India,” he said.
“The embassy does not perform background checks on the passengers who request to book tickets. We only collect information about the purpose of their travel back to India to prioritise the list of potential passengers,” he added.
A friend of one of the passengers who came to say goodbye, Anbin Ezhilan, said: “My friend’s wife had come to Cambodia with their four-year-old son in February but got stuck here due to COVID-19. She is pregnant and wanted to return to her home country to get proper care for herself and her son. Her husband is sad she is leaving, but during the pandemic, they felt this was the right choice to return home. Health comes first,” he added.
21/10/20 Scarlett Green/Khmer Times
Washington: Air India’s insistence on the mandatory security scanning of mortal remains before transporting it back to India has been causing distress, with community leaders ruing that the process at times is insensitive to their religious and cultural values.
Government officials, familiar with the process of transportation of mortal remains and airport security in the US, have said that Air India is the only airline to be insisting upon security scanning of mortal remains.
“Except for Air India, no other airline does this scanning,” a senior government official said on condition of anonymity, adding that there is no such mandatory provision in federal manuals and American airport security protocols.
A significantly large number of Indians wear rings in their fingers or jewellery, mostly in case of women, which because of religious and cultural reasons are not removed after death. As a result, the mortal remains of the deceased give a security alert during the scanning process.
In most of these cases, Air India security officials insist that they be removed, for which the body is taken back to the funeral home to do the needful like the removal of rings or other jewellery.
In some cases, it has come to the notice that Air India security officials insist on removing a dhoti or a sari (ethnic wear), which many times are gold-plated or carry some metals, before it can be allowed to be transported through the cargo section of the plane.
21/10/20 Link
New Delhi: In a bid to resurrect Air India privatisation, the government is planning to give flexibility to potential investors to decide on the humongous debt with the national carrier, a top official has said.
The flexibility to potential investors on the quantum of the Rs 60,074 crore debt that they want to absorb will replace the current condition of the buyer taking over more than a third of the debt and transferring the rest to a special purpose vehicle, department of investment and public asset management (DIPAM) secretary Tuhin Kanta Pandey said.
The potential investors in Air India have given feedback that due to the uncertainty created by COVID-19 in the aviation sector the debt should not be fixed at the expression of interest (EoI) stage, he added.
As per the Air India EoI floated by DIPAM in January, of the airline's total debt of Rs 60,074 crore as of March 31, 2019, the buyer would be required to absorb Rs 23,286.5 crore, while the rest would be transferred to Air India Assets Holding Ltd (AIAHL), a special purpose vehicle.
The government is seeking to sell 100 per cent of its stake in the state-owned national airline, including Air India's 100 per cent shareholding in AI Express Ltd and 50 per cent in Air India SATS Airport Services Private Ltd.
20/10/20 PTI/Times of India
New Delhi: India has now entered into an air bubble arrangement with Japan and Air India will operate flights on Delhi-Tokyo route on which permitted categories of travellers can fly.
The Indian embassy in Tokyo tweeted on Tuesday that, “India and Japan are now part of the air bubble system. Registration of passengers with embassy of India, Tokyo, is no longer required and bookings should be done directly with the airiness concerned.”
“Air India has announced its air bubble schedule from Delhi to Tokyo from November 2 to December 28, 2020, and from Tokyo to Delhi from November 4 to December 30, 2020,” the Indian embassy tweet added.
While Japan Airlines and ANA had regular connections to India before schedule International flights were suspended here in March-end due to the pandemic, Air India is the only Indian carrier that operates to Japan.
20/10/20 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
New Delhi: To attract potential suitors, the government will ease asset valuation norms for Air India by allowing bidders to put in offers on an enterprise value basis, a source said on Monday.
To begin with, the government is likely to further extend the deadline for putting in a preliminary expression of interest for the loss-making national carrier to December 15.
The source said bids will be sought on an enterprise value basis – a popular valuation methodology for takeover deals.
Enterprise value (EV) is a measure of a company’s total value, often used as a more comprehensive alternative to equity market capitalization. EV includes in its calculation the market capitalization of a company but also short-term and long-term debt as well as any cash on the company’s balance sheet.
The source said the government would remove from the Preliminary Information Memorandum (PIM) the quantum of debt to be assumed by the bidder.
The bidders would also be asked to place offers for the entire company, 85 per cent of which would be considered to go towards debt repayment and the balance would accrue to the government, the source said.
“Changes are being made to the valuation method. CGD (Core Group on Disinvestment) has approved it and it would be placed before AISAM (Air India Specific Alternative Mechanism). The deadline for Air India bid is proposed to be extended till December 15,” the source told PTI.
This would be the fifth extension to the Air India bid deadline with the current one ending on October 30.
After its unsuccessful bid to sell Air India in 2018, the government in January 2020 restarted the divestment process and invited bids for selling 100 per cent of its equity in the state-owned airline, including Air India’s 100 per cent shareholding in AI Express Ltd and 50 per cent in Air India SATS Airport Services Private Ltd.
19/10/20 PTI/Indian Express