Modair introduces Sky Adventure Tourism activities in India

Giving a big boost to adventure tourism in India in line with the government’s commitment towards Atmanirbhar Bharat in all strata of economy, Modair, one of India’s leading adventure travel companies, has begun offering exciting Sky Adventure Tourism services first time in India. Modair specializes in multiple flying activities like adventure flying, cockpit flying and sky-diving among others.

Recently, the government of India has given a new push to domestic travel with the campaign “Dekho Apna Desh” to reenergize domestic tourism to revive the economy. Taking inspiration from the same, Modair has come up with a wide range of air adventure tourism services with an eye on expanding its footprints across the globe. Modair has already started its operations from Neemrana and Aligarh Airports initially.

Atul Jain, Chairman, Modair said, “Enthused by the government’s renewed commitment towards boosting domestic tourism we have launched Sky Adventure Tourism in India with the aim to support the economy to grow on the back of domestic spending in tourism sector. While we have already introduced a wide range of air adventure tourism services, we further look forward to come up with many more exciting offerings for adventure travel connoisseurs to explore great number of world-class tourist attractions in India. All our efforts are intended to help support Indian economy by giving a boost to investment in India’s price competitive tourism sector.”

Modair offers entirely bespoke experience to the adventure air tourism enthusiasts through their private jets and a wide bouquet of adventure sports offerings. Earlier the people/or the enthusiasts used to travel abroad for adventure air tourism, but now due to the advent of Modair, they don’t require to go out of the country to satiate their craving for adventure.

22/07/21 Hotelier India

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India’s first pod taxi to operate between Jewar Airport and Noida Film City

Indian Port Rail and Ropeway Corporation Ltd (IPRCL) has prepared a Detailed Project Report or DPR for the pod taxi service between Noida Airport at Jewar and Film City. This is a 14 km stretch. Zee Business’ Sameer Dixit Reports.

IPRCL has prepared a Detailed Project Report or DPR for the pod taxi service between Noida Airport at Jewar and Film City, Dixit says. This is a 14 km stretch, he adds.

Indian Port Rail and Ropeway Corporation Ltd (IPRCL) has prepared a final draft for the DPR for the 14 km taxi pod line and has submitted it to the Yamuna Authority. This will be India’s first pod taxi service.  Now Yamuna Expressway Industrial Development Authority (YEIDA) board will discuss about the final DPR and if everything goes well, the DPR will be approved. The final approval has to come from the Uttar Pradesh Government.  

14/07/21  Sameer Dixit/ZeeBiz

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APFTA expands their operations to establish a Flight Training Organization at Kalaburagi Airport

Hyderabad: Asia Pacific Flight Training Academy (APFTA) Limited has recently entered into an agreement with Airport Authority of India (AAI) for establishing a Flight Training Organization (FTO) on Design, Build, Operate, Maintain and Transfer (DBOMT) basis at Kalaburagi Airport in Karnataka for 25 years.

This is in line with the vision of APFTA to produce the best well rounded aviation professionals with the highest standards of integrity, safety, discipline and professionalism.

APFTA Limited is a DGCA approved FTO, based at Rajiv Gandhi International Airport (RGIA) & Begumpet Airport, Hyderabad and has been established to provide World-Class Pilot Training to aspiring Cadets.

The Agreement was signed by M Hemanth DP, Chief Executive Officer – Asia Pacific Flight Training & Mr Gnaneswara Rao Airport Director (AAI), Kalaburagi Airport, a release here said on Tuesday.

On this occasion, Mr Hemanth who has a vast experience of Indian Aviation Industry stated, that “I am thankful to Airport Authority of India, DGCA & Ministry of Civil Aviation, for facilitating this initiative under Prime Minister of India’s ‘Athmanirbhar Bharat’ & ‘Make in India’ vision in Pilot Training.

India is expected to be the third largest Aviation market in the world by 2025 and there is a huge requirement for well-trained pilots in India.

Civil AviationMinister Hardeep Singh Puri stated in Rajya Sabha in September 2020 that India requires 9488 Pilots by 2024-25. Hence, the government is fully committed to the urgent need to upgrade the Flight Training infrastructure to meet the growing demand, he said.

13/07/21 UNI

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Rakesh Jhunjhunwala Mulls Multi-Crore Investment In New Airline; Details Inside

New Delhi: Rakesh Jhunjhunwala is planning to go for a big-money investment in the aviation sector. Jhunjhunwala is mulling to make multi-crore investment in new, low-fare airline. Preliminary talks have been completed, and Jhunjhunwala can invest to the tune of around Rs 260 crore, according to a report by PressWire18.

The proposed airline’s name could be ‘Akash’. The meetings have been held between Jhunjhunwala and a team led by former Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dubey. Talks are also held with a foreign investor, the PressWire18 report says.

If talks are materialised, then Jhunjhunwala can invest USD 35 Million in the airline and will hold around 40 per cent equity of the company, the report says.

Meanwhile, the new airline has made an application for a no objection certificate with the Ministry of Civil Aviation.

The new airline is being built by Head of Revenue Management at GoAir Arvind Srinivasan and former Vice President of Jet and former COO of GoAir Pravin Iyer, according to the report.

The team is eyeing the civil aviation ministry’s NOC first, and then raising funds and making strong business plan, as per the report.

If everything goes according to the plan, then the airline can be launched in the middle of next year.

Jhunjhunwala in past had shown keen interest in the airline industry. The veteran investor had more than 1 per cent stake in Spicejet. He also held about one per cent stake in the Jet Airways, the report says.

12/07/21 India.com

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About 80kms Away from Bengaluru, Trials Underway for Drone Delivery of Drugs to Remote Patients

Every day for the last 20 days, a team of technicians and engineers in Gauribidanur, which is about 80 kms from Bengaluru, have been on a special mission — getting their two-feet-by-two-feet copter buzzing in the air to test for speed and accuracy.

These are drones that are on a 45-day pilot trial for healthcare purposes — mostly, they have been delivering medicines to patients in remote or hard-to-reach homes. These are among the experiments being tried out in India as part of an effort to ramp up health infrastructure, at a time when the threat of a third wave of Covid-19 looms large.

“The government has asked us to do 100 hours of this kind of experiment, so what we are trying to do is about eight deliveries on a daily basis. It’s the first time we are trying drone deliveries beyond the visual line of sight. While we will stick to day-time experiments for the first 50 hours, after that we will try out night-time deliveries as well," said Nagendran Kandasamy, CEO and Founder of Throttle Aerospace Systems, which is among the companies that have got approvals from the Director-General of Civil Aviation.

The drones manufactured by his company are of different sizes and capabilities — but the one used for medical purposes (called a MedCopter) can carry up to two kgs in weight and flies at a height of about 120 meters. But these are technology demonstration specifications given by the DGCA for the pilot, to minimise risk. It can be enhanced to carry goods up to 10 kgs in weight and travel at an altitude of 1 km soon enough.

While the DGCA has given a 20 km radius in Gauribidanur to prove the tech, eventually, the plan is to be able to ship goods up to 100 km range too — for example, vaccines to remote areas of the northeast from nodal hospitals.

“The drone has various sensors on it, so they continuously interact with the outside — it can sense its surroundings, be it another drone or a manned aircraft or some kind of obstacle like a tree in front of it. It’s a purely autonomous drone and has a 360-degree collision avoidance sensor that senses danger and avoids it. That’s how the system can play a vital role in remote areas," said Kandasamy, adding that trials so far have been successful.

“Last week, we did a challenge — we asked an ambulance to start at the same time as our drone to go to a hard-to-reach location. The drone was able to do so in four minutes, while the ambulance took 26 minutes. So the saving of 22 minutes is a game-changer," he says.

For a country where thousands of families were literally searching entire cities to find critical drugs like remdesivir just about two months back, to be able to deliver such drugs on time would be critical to saving lives — especially in rural areas where moving from one place to another by road has its own problems.

“What we are looking at is not medicine delivery – but connectivity," said Smit Shah, the Director of the Drones Federation of India.

12/07/21 CNN-NEWS18/News18

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A new low-cost airline is planning flights from London Stansted to India – but when will it fly?

The newest competitor in the long-haul, low-cost airline arena has secured a U.K. base. Now the big question is, when will it actually be able to fly?

Flypop, the U.K.-based startup international budget carrier with plans to connect the United Kingdom with India, has confirmed London Stansted Airport (STN) will be its U.K. hub. The decision to use Stansted (STN) was reportedly made because the airline anticipates strong demand for direct flights to so-called ‘secondary cities’ of India.

Stansted Airport also offers the extra convenience of rail lines that connect to London and the Midlands.

“London Stansted Airport has a history of being the base for low-cost carriers and we feel it is the perfect fit for our passengers,” said Flypop CEO Navdip Singh Judge. “Flypop is focused on serving the Indian and South Asian diaspora communities living in the UK and their visiting friends and relatives, for whom London Stansted is the most convenient airport location.”

The airline will be using a fleet of A330-300 double-aisle wide-body jets for its initial U.K. flights. It has pledged to offer the most affordable direct flights from the UK to South Asia’s “second cities” beginning with India. With its aircraft secured, Flypop hopes to launch its first flights this year. At launch, the carrier is expected to fly two routes from London Stansted (STN) to both Amritsar (ATQ) and Ahmedabad (AMD). Eventually, it wants to launch services to Kolkata and Goa as well.

It’s not clear exactly when Flypop’s first flights will take off, though. India remains firmly entrenched on the UK’s red list for travel, banning tourists from India, and sending returning British citizens and residents into strict hotel-managed quarantine. With the highly transmissible Delta variant still active in both India and the United Kingdom, it could be some time before India is removed from that list.

Flypop is certainly aware that its launch plans are subject to the pandemic and are at the mercy of how both countries control any further outbreaks. On the Flypop website’s FAQ section, the answer to the question, “When can I fly?” is, “Subject to covid restrictions, we look forward to welcoming you onboard later this year.”

Not quite a specific answer, but probably the most realistic one they can provide at the moment.

In the meantime, the airline is in negotiations with second city airports across India and says it will confirm its first Indian airport hubs soon.

02/07/21 Mike Avila/Points Guy

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Aim to start Mihan project quickly, create jobs for Vid

Padma Shri Kalpana Saroj is known as the original ‘Slumdog Millionaire’. Born in a Dalit family in Murtijarpur town of Akola district, her story is of a child bride living in a Mumbai slum becoming a business tycoon. Saroj grabbed headlines after taking over Kamani Tubes Limited, a company originally founded by freedom fighter and industrialist Ramji Kamani. The company was slated for liquidation when Saroj stepped in and revived it. Now, she plans an aviation venture in Nagpur through Kalpana Saroj Global Aviation Limited, a fully-owned subsidiary of Kamani Tubes. Starting with one acre, the company has bigger plans.

Excerpts from an interview >>

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