WTFares comes with a now or never offer for frequent travelers

New Delhi : WTFares.com, is India's first travel startup to offer free cancellation on domestic flights, is back with another irresistible proposition, this time for frequent flyers.
Users are being offered a Magic Account via which they can book tickets in the most effortless manner over a simple call or just by sending a WhatsApp message. What's more, users get a whole range of services by upgrading their account to a Magic Account.
Continuing its proposition of free cancellation, users of Magic Account get unlimited free cancellations on all domestic tickets booked. Also all the booking processed if they don't avail free cancellation will have absolutely no convenience charges attached. If the customers are travelling via low cost airlines that offer no in-flight meal, then they get a complimentary meal of their preference free of charge.
With WTFares.com's Magic accounts, flyers can easily stretch their legs as they will get seats with extra leg room (if available) on every booking made. To get a Magic account, all a user has to do is pay a one-time fee of Rs. 4,999 and avail all these services for a full year. The offer is valid for all preferred partner airline partners - Indigo, Go Air, Spice Jet and Jet Airways.
30/11/17 ANI/New Kerala

Read More

Indigo offers Zoomcar self drive cars and Savaari cabs to its passengers

Domestic Airliner Indigo has partnered with self-drive car rental company Zoomcar, and car rental company Savaari to offer airport transfers to its passengers from the airport and other locations in the city.

How it works: In case of Zoomcar, the company says that passengers can pick the vehicle from the airport or anywhere in the city, and can drop back the car at the airport. In August, Zoomcar had launched a one-way intercity service called Hop where a customer can pick up a car from a location from one city and drop it off at another city at a Zoomcar location. So, it is unclear if the service offered to Indigo’s passenger has this flexibility or not.  For Savaari cabs, it is like any other cab service. Riders can book a cab from airport the and can take the cab outstation or can have a local transfer.
Even though we haven’t heard much of Savaari’s developments in recent past, we called Savaari’s customer care and figured that they have a dedicated airport service, which needs to be booked in advance via its mobile app. It is unclear, how an Indigo passenger can avail this service. We have also reached out to Zoomcar for more details of the tie-up and we will update as soon as we get more info from them.

Jet Airways also offer airport transfer service to its passengers with intercity travel or self-drive options. To offer these services, Jet Airways has tieups with Uber and CarsonRent. Moreover, it has its own fleet of taxis called ‘JetFleet’. We checked other airlines too, but did come across any car or cab services on their websites.

It looks like these airlines are trying to get into territory of Online travel agents (OTAs) such as MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Ixigo, which too offer local and outstation cab services-however these are not necessarily focused at airport transfers. Note that some of the airliners offer hotel services as well similar to OTAs.
28/11/17 Medianama

Read More

This Mumbai pilot’s experimental aircraft could take to the skies soon

Mumbai: Seated inside his comfortable duplex home in Kandivali, Shivaji Yadav (71) welcomes each passing visitor with a smile. In the past week, the number of visitors has increased as acquaintances arrive to congratulate the family for getting a certificate of registration for his son Captain Amol Yadav’s indigenous aircraft, claimed to have been built on the terrace of his residence in Sukant Co-operative Housing Society in Charkop.
“We are very happy as we have achieved the impossible. We have achieved the first step of an impossible task that took 17 years to see the light of day. A certificate of registration certifies my son’s hard work. We now await a licence to fly it,” says Shivaji, who runs a construction company. Amol (41), a commander with Jet Airways since 2005, received the licence of registration for the six-seater aircraft, TAC 003, on November 17 from the DGCA.
“The major turn in our lives came when the Civil Aviation Requirement (CAR) Section 2-Series F-Part XVIII, 1992 under the Airworthiness Criteria was deleted from the DGCA website in 2013. The rule allowed for anybody in the country to manufacture an aircraft on an experimental basis. My son made the aircraft under this criteria. While he had applied in 2011, we got no reply. After its deletion, his hard work saw no value,” Shivaji recalls.
In a letter dated December 16, 2015, the DGCA wrote to Amol to pursue a ‘type certification’ for his aircraft from the Aircraft Engineering Department. However, Amol believes his aircraft does not require to be certified for its type as it has been made on an experimental basis.
“When the CAR was deleted, I was shattered. I recall writing multiple letters to the DGCA to understand the reason for its deletion. They replied saying the CAR was deleted as they wanted to regulate the manufacturing of experimental aircraft in the country. Without this CAR, my aircraft did not qualify under any other aviation regulatory standard in the country. It was the darkest moment of my life but my family helped me through this,” Amol recalls.
“The legalities are different for experimental aircraft. Type certification is a process that comes later. Also, amateur-built airplanes need not be built from scratch. You can build them from artificial kits available in a way that qualifies them to fly. Encouragement should be given to build experimental aircraft in the country,” says Captain Vicky Randawa of the Experimental Aircraft Association.
26/11/17 Neha Kulkarni/Indian Express

Read More

Remote air traffic control: Cost effective but will India's notorious runway incursions keep it incident free

From next year, it is possible that your flight is being managed either by an air traffic control tower on trucks or from a remote location, not from the airport premises. The Airports Authority of India is drawing up plans to test mobile ATC towers and those that operate remotely, in a bid to save costs and provide effective ATC services to small airports where operations are mushrooming.

So, instead of having ATC towers at Ahmedabad as well as all other small airports within Gujarat, the plan is to just have these services at Ahmedabad airport – and the ATCs present here will direct takeoffs and landings at other airports within the state either remotely or through towers which are mobile, mounted on trucks.
This is a fine idea, implemented in some other countries like Canada, Sweden etc but will it work for India? We are notorious for our unseemly runway incursions, from all manner of animals and humans collecting firewood from airport premises, besides other forms of encroachments.
This piece in India Today shows how a dog on the runway at the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport of Mumbai lead a Jet Airways flight to abort take-off while four others were made to hover in the skies for more than 15 minutes last year. If we are unable to prevent animal and human incursions on runways when the ATC services are present at the airport, will we be able to manage landings and takeoffs at small airports with remote ATC operations without incidents?
This piece  in Telegraph talks of passenger safety is being threatened across Madhya Pradesh’s airports due to “regular” encounters with wild boars, jackals, panthers, nilgai, goats, stray dogs, sloth bears, wildcats etc on runways.
Of course there are plus points too of such a move towards remote ATC facilities. As this piece  in Indian Express explains, the economics of such a move is compelling, though here again, problems with mobile signal and therefore connectivity issues will have to be sorted out. Or we could see ATC operations suddenly going blank (happens at larger airports with in-house ATC too) on power failures, signal issues. The AAI says it had budgeted for Rs 15 crore to test remote ATC facilities and has already issued an Expression of Interest (EoI) from interested parties for such a move. The first such tower is likely coming up at Ahmedabad by December next year.
10/11/17 Sindhu Bhattacharya/First Post

Read More

India's first remote Air Traffic Control tower likely by December 2018

New Delhi: India is likely to get its first remote air traffic control tower by December 2018 at Ahmedabad airport, allowing one tower to manage aircraft movements for several nearby airstrips, Chairman Airports Authority of India (AAI)Guruprasad Mohapatra said today.

Remote and Virtual Tower (RVT) is a new concept where air traffic service at an airport is performed somewhere else, thereby, dispensing with the need for a tower on its premises.

Mohapatra said that the concept will be useful for smaller airports under the government's regional connectivity scheme (RCS), which aims to utilise underserved and unserved airports and improve connectivity to tier-2 and tier-3 cities.

"Under RCS, we will have a plethora of airports with just one or two flights per day. So, rather than setting up Air Traffic Control towers and deploying ATC personnel (at each of these airports) we hope to cover them with remote tower concept," Mohapatra told reporters.
09/11/17 PTI/Economic Times

Read More

Pre-wed shoot inside aircraft, offers galore

The dream of having a pre wedding shoot in air is a dream, however having it inside the aircraft is a reality now. While in Europe, UAE etc pre wedding shoots in airport hanger have been done, closer home, in Rajasthan, Supreme airlines which has been operating intra state flights in the state has brought this new offer of getting a pre wedding shoot inside the aircraft.
Officials informed that this service will be offered by the airlines only on Sundays and it will be charged at Rs 1,49,000.

“We are offering this service to shoot inside the aircraft for pre wedding shoot on Sundays,”confirmed Ammeet Agarwal, CEO of Supreme airlines.

Sources informed that the shooting can be done by taking the flight to places like Sawaimadhopur or Sikar.Shooting in the aircraft will give new creativity idea to the wedding planners.
10/11/17 Abhishek Tiwari/DNA

Read More

State govt mulls turning Bengal into drone making hub of India

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee-government is trying to project Bengal as a drone manufacturing hub of India. The government has already earmarked some areas in Kalyani, Falta, Naihati and Sonarpur that can be used for drone testing and demonstration. The government is also considering the proposed Sonarpur hardware manufacturing park as a preferred destination for manufacturing drones by giving plots at affordable rates. The total land area for the hardware park is 10.72 acre that has been divided into 17 plots with the total allocable area as 7.42 acre.

"We have thoroughly examined the Drone Policy of the Central government that has been recently published in the "Requirements for Operation of Civil Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS)". Next week we will communicate in writing to the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) our feedback on the policy where we will share our detailed plan on how we are planning to project Bengal as a drone manufacturing epicenter of the country," a senior official of the state Information & Technology (IT) department said.

The state government and Webel has already consulted different organisations focusing on drone manufacturing, assembling and providing training on Unmanned Aircraft flying. "We have also taken the opinion of the different authorities like Kolkata Police, Kolkata Municipal Corporation and other eminent personalities experienced in Defence and Air Operations," the official added.
05/11/17 millenniumpost

Read More

The man who built an aeroplane on his Mumbai rooftop

Mumbai: Seven years ago, Amol Yadav announced to his family and friends that he would build an aeroplane on the roof of a boxy apartment building in the teeming Indian city of Mumbai.
Incredulous friends and family members asked the young pilot how he planned to bring the plane down once it was complete.
"I really don't know," he told them.
Mr Yadav, who flies twin-engine turboprop planes for a living, is nothing if not obstinate.
The five-storey building, home to his 19-member joint family, didn't have a lift, so they lugged factory lathes, compressors, welding machines, and an imported 180kg (396lb) engine up the narrow stairwell to the roof.
Braving sticky summers and torrential monsoon rains, Mr Yadav and his motley crew - an automobile garage mechanic and an expert fabricator - worked under a tarp shed on the unkempt 111.5 sq m (1,200 sq ft) roof, less than half the size of a tennis court.
In February last year, his six-seater propeller plane was ready.
It is, according to Mr Yadav, the first such aircraft built at home in India.
The engine, he claims, is powerful enough to make the plane climb up to 3,920m (13,000ft); and the tank can hold enough fuel to cover a distance of 2,000km, cruising at 342km (185 nautical miles) an hour.
On the rooftop, however, the plane strained to fit in, its tail stretching over the parapet wall and protruding into the smoggy sky.
"Now we had to take the plane down from the top of the roof and show it to the people," Mr Yadav, 41, told me recently at his residence.
05/11/17 Soutik Biswas/BBC News

Read More

The man who built an aeroplane on his Mumbai rooftop

Mumbai: Seven years ago, Amol Yadav announced to his family and friends that he would build an aeroplane on the roof of a boxy apartment building in the teeming Indian city of Mumbai.
Incredulous friends and family members asked the young pilot how he planned to bring the plane down once it was complete.
"I really don't know," he told them.
Mr Yadav, who flies twin-engine turboprop planes for a living, is nothing if not obstinate.
The five-storey building, home to his 19-member joint family, didn't have a lift, so they lugged factory lathes, compressors, welding machines, and an imported 180kg (396lb) engine up the narrow stairwell to the roof.
Braving sticky summers and torrential monsoon rains, Mr Yadav and his motley crew - an automobile garage mechanic and an expert fabricator - worked under a tarp shed on the unkempt 111.5 sq m (1,200 sq ft) roof, less than half the size of a tennis court.
In February last year, his six-seater propeller plane was ready.
It is, according to Mr Yadav, the first such aircraft built at home in India.
The engine, he claims, is powerful enough to make the plane climb up to 3,920m (13,000ft); and the tank can hold enough fuel to cover a distance of 2,000km, cruising at 342km (185 nautical miles) an hour.
On the rooftop, however, the plane strained to fit in, its tail stretching over the parapet wall and protruding into the smoggy sky.
"Now we had to take the plane down from the top of the roof and show it to the people," Mr Yadav, 41, told me recently at his residence.
05/11/17 Soutik Biswas/BBC News

Read More

Soon, you might be able to travel by helicopters from Noida to Delhi!

New Delhi: Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) was on Saturday asked to explore the possibility of air travellers availing helicopter services to connect them nearer to their homes in cities such as Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida and Ghaziabad instead of travelling by road.

Speaking at the 1st Heli Expo India 2017 organised by the PHD Chamber of Commerce and Industry in New Delhi, Rajiv Nayan Choubey, secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation, noted that the government is gearing up to provide the air commuters with regional connectivity through helicopter and smaller aircraft.

"I have asked DIAL to explore possibilities for providing space for helicopters at well within Delhi Airports so that heli services are launched for providing direct connectivity to air travelers so that these avail of such facilities and reach their respective destinations through air routes and within much shorter time instead taking to land routes that takes longer and is cumbersome also given the traffic congestion," Choubey said.
04/11/17 IANS/Business Standard

Read More