Indian's PM seaplane flight may aid SpiceJet, Zoom Air

The development of scheduled seaplane passenger operations in India received a boost from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who flew on a seaplane on an election trail in his home state of Gujarat, the Financial Express has reported. This support can benefit SpiceJet  and Zoom Air (India) (ZO, Delhi Int'l) which both eye seaplane operations in West Bengal.

The Indian PM flew on a single-engine seaplane earlier in January, taking off from the Sabarmati river in Ahmedabad and landing near the Dharoi Dam in Mehsana. Such a flight, while convenient, was ostensibly in violation of the PM's own safety protocol which requires him to always fly on twin-engine aircraft.

India has been mulling seaplane operations as a viable way to improve connectivity of remote areas in the country without the need for building costly airport infrastructure for a while. Development of such traffic is currently blocked by the law, which does not allow for commercial passenger operations on single-engine aircraft.

SpiceJet and Zoom Air both see a potential for seaplane operations particularly in West Bengal state, but before this can happen the law needs to be revised. Modi's flight could be a boost for these changes.

Seaplanes could improve connectivity to the Sunderbans, Gangasagar and Murshidabad in West Bengal, boosting tourism in these areas, the Financial Express noted.
30/01/18 ch-aviation

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Seaplanes can boost tourism in a big way: Spicejet CEO

Bullish on the growth prospects for seaplanes in India, leading airline Spicejet's CEO Ajay Singh has said this new mode of transport can boost the country's tourism sector in a big way as they can convert any pond into an airport and can make any river a runway.
Stating that SpiceJet was the first in the country to bring in this concept on a pilot basis, Singh said the use of seaplane by Prime Minister Narendra Modi during Gujarat elections has given it a further push.
"We can see a lot of interests from several states and the prime minister using a sea plane has given it a further push. Everyone feels it can boost tourism in a very big way in connecting places that are difficult to access by roads or any other means but have rivers and ponds," Singh told PTI in an interview.
Singh, who was here to attend the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting from January 22-26, said the seaplanes have a great growth potential.
"We were the first to bring them to India with an aim to use them in areas where it was difficult to build airport infrastructure. So we thought let's use this alternative technology that allows every river to become a runway and every pond to be an airport. This is a really revolutionary technology that can connect from anywhere to everywhere," he said.
28/01/18 moneycontrol.com

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Narendra Modi’s recent sea plane ride turns SpiceJet, Zoom Air’s eyes towards West Bengal

Kolkata: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent ride on a single engine sea plane from Sabarmati in Ahmedabad to Dharoi Dam in Mehsana of Gujarat, during the Gujarat Assembly polls, might just have given a big boost to the prospect of sea planes in the country. Potential sea plane operators such as SpiceJet and Zoom Air are betting big on West Bengal to make it a successful venture. Modi broke his safety protocol by choosing to ride a single engine sea plane instead of a double or multiple engine air craft, while campaigning for the polls. Sea planes are an advantage and a viable option for the Indian aviation industry since it doesn’t require the construction airports. Although Modi gave a push to this possibility by boarding his sea plane from the Sabarmati river, Zoom Air owner, Koustav M Dhar feels the feasibility of a water runway lies more on the river Hoogly.

The calmness of the Hooghly river and its 260 kilometres long stretch from Farakka in Murshidabad district up to the Bay of Bengal in the south 24 parganas district can be used as ideal runway for sea planes. This can provide connectivity to places of tourist interest such as the Sunderbans, Gangasagar and Murshidabad, where easy access is still an issue, feels Ajay Singh, chairman and managing director, Spice Jet as well as Zoom Air’s Dhar.

While West Bengal has an eye on tourism for economic growth, sea planes can make a huge value addition in the entire value chain. Not only providing connectivity, but sea planes can be a product of added attraction to generate more tourists as well. State tourism minister Gautam Dev said tourists foot fall in the state has grown at a CAGR of 26.5% between 2011 and 2016 against a CAGR of 14.5% between 2001 and 2010. 500,000 jobs have been generated from this sector between FY11 and FY16 and this has happened since the state laid emphasis in creating tourism infrastructure.

While SpiceJet’s Singh said he was keen to make West Bengal the hub of sea planes and that manufacturing sea planes from the state was of immense opportunity during the recently-concluded Bengal Global Business Summit, Zoom Air’s Dhar, who is in a spree of providing air connectivity between Delhi, Jabalpur, Kolkata, Bagdogra and various destinations of Northeast with his fleet of five 50-seater Bombardier CRJ200/700 LR aircrafts, (two more of such aircrafts to be added shortly), said he would look into the issues of regulatory framework.
21/01/18 Indronil Roychowdhury/Financial Express

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Flight of Fancy

New Delhi: Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari recently chose to stick his neck out when he said that India has the potential to start 10,000 seaplanes. This, he felt, was possible because India has 3-4 lakh ponds, 2,000 river ports, 200 small ports and 12 major ports that could be used to operate flying boats. The number, however, seems a bit over the top.

For one, even in the mature civil aviation sector, the total aircraft fleet of scheduled commercial airlines stands at 492, with 923 more on order. There is an argument that regular aircraft cannot be compared to seaplanes; but if Trans Maldivian Airways, which operates the world's largest seaplane fleet, works with just 49 aircraft, it's difficult to fathom that India will suddenly spawn operators which are bigger than the more established seaplane operators around the world.

Meanwhile, taking its cue from the government's intent, SpiceJet has announced that it plans to induct 100 seaplanes in its fleet at a cost of $400 million.
28/01/18 Manu Kaushik/Business Today

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Navigating a future for seaplanes will be tough

Mumbai: Seaplanes seem to be making quite a splash in the news these days. Even before Prime Minister Narendra Modi capped his Gujarat campaign with an eye-catching takeoff from the Sabarmati river to a touchdown in the Dharoi dam, seaplane services were being discussed by the government.
Just a few days before that, on December 9, transport minister Nitin Gadkari and civil aviation minister Ashok Gajapathi Raju had come to Girgaum Chowpatty in Mumbai to watch the trial touchdown of a SpiceJetBSE 0.25 % seaplane that had taken off from Mumbai airport 10 minutes earlier.

SpiceJet had earlier announced ambitious plans to buy 100 seaplanes from the Japanese company Setouchi Holdings at a cost of $4 million each. This was quite a leap for a company that had been flirting with bankruptcy just a few years ago, but with the evident support of the Union ministers, it felt ready to expand this sector in a radical way.

SpiceJet chairman Ajay Singh has been quoted as saying that seaplanes are the answer to the shortage of airports in India. "The basic logic for this is that in India we need last-mile connectivity," he said. "The amphibian plane opens up a lot of areas, creates a lot of flexibility."

Gadkari, who has been linked to disruptive change ever since he promoted 50 flyovers across Mumbai in the 1990s, expansively spoke about the potential for 10,000 seaplanes. "We have 3-4 lakh ponds in India, plenty of dams, 2,000 river ports, 200 small ports and 12 major ports," he said, implying that all of them could be accessed by seaplanes. He pointed to destinations like Shirdi, which could be easily accessed this way.
There hasn't been this much interest in water-based flight in India for over 80 years. It was back in September 1930 that the Times of India (TOI) used words very similar to the minister's today: "To the layman, the advantages of flying boats are obvious, as at present unbridged rivers and backwaters, together with the absence of a coastal railway except for a stretch of a hundred miles between Mangalore and Calicut, reduce all transit down the West Coast to the pace of a steamroller."
06/01/18 Vikram Doctor/Economic Times

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Varanasi seaplane service might be a reality soon

Varanasi tourism might be in for a boost as SpiceJet plans to launch seaplane service here in the city. According to the chairman of the aviation company, Ajay Singh, 2018 could see the launch of such planes, and Varanasi to be the launch-pad for the same. The planes can land both on land and water, and would be connected to nearby cities.

The seaplane service had already seen the light of day when it was demonstrated on December 9, 2017 as it flew from Mumbai airport to Girgaum Chowpatty. Indian PM Narendra Modi also flew in the aircraft in Ahmedabad in December, 2017. After these successful demonstrations, it is now being said that 2018 might see the first of seaplane services in India, starting with Varanasi.
Varanasi tourism could be reaching new heights with the introduction of the seaplanes, for these planes would just require a water body for takeoff and landing. The floats of the seaplane have tyres, and thus it can have the river as a runway. The aviation company working towards this project has tied up with Setouchi Holdings Inc of Japan, and are working together to deliver planes that are 10 and 14 seaters. Each of these seaplanes cost around $5 million, and the company is looking to place an order for 100 planes at the least.
02/01/18 Arka Roy Chowdhury/Happy Trips

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‘Much work needed to make seaplanes fly’

New Delhi: Stepping up the government’s efforts to introduce sea-planes in a big way, Union minister Nitin Gadkari has said that India could have around 10,000 amphibian planes — a number far greater than the total fleet size of all domestic airlines combined. However, experts are not convinced of the plausibility of this estimate.

“I have been talking about seaplanes. If it starts in India, we have the potential to start 10,000 seaplanes. We have three to four lakh ponds in India, plenty of dams, 2,000 river ports, 200 small ports and 12 major ports. It will cost less,” Gadkari was quoted as saying by a news agency.

Seaplanes have been a point of discussion recently in the country after pictures of Prime Minister Narendra Modi landing on the Sabarmati river in a single-engine seaplane during the Gujarat election were circulated in the media. The government, too, has kept the segment alive with numerous announcements. Gadkari has also asked his civil aviation counterpart Ashok Gajapathi Raju to explore a regulatory regime for single-engine seaplanes to facilitate introduction of such planes in the country as early as possible.

At present, the number of seaplanes in India is in single digits and there is no regulatory framework for them in place to operate. “Infrastructure for seaplanes is close to non-existence. Air corridor needs to be mapped. Radar and other necessary equipment and permissions have to be put in place. I am not sure whether these things have been worked out,” said Jaijit Bhattacharya, partner and head, economic, regulatory and policy advisory at KPMG.

Currently, there are seaplanes operating in places like Goa and Andaman and Nicobar Islands but the light-weight planes have been pulled out from other places due to high cost of flying.
Moreover, the unavailability of pilots to fly seaplanes, absence of domestic manufacturing, maintenance, repair and operation facility, building the infrastructure and other challenges make it a long road for sea planes to become a common sight in the Indian sky. “It will take some decades for 10,000 seaplanes to fly in India,” said an expert requesting anonymity.
01/01/18 Arshad Khan/New Indian Express

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