AirAsia India inducts 20th plane, to add Mumbai in network

Budget carrier AirAsia India Friday announced the induction of 20th aircraft in its fleet, making it eligible to fly on international routes.
The Tata Sons-Air Asia invested joint venture airline also said it will add Mumbai in its network from early next year with the launch of daily flight services to the country's financial hub from Bengaluru, starting January 15.
This will be Malaysian airliner group's third entry into the Mumbai market after discontinuing the services to the city first by AirAsia Berhad in 2012 and then by its subsidiary Indonesian AirAsia X in April this year.
"We are pleased to make the much-awaited announcement of adding Mumbai to our network. We're also happy to welcome our 20th Airbus A320 aircraft to our fleet," Sunil Bhaskaran, chief executive officer, AirAsia India, said in a release.
The daily services on the Bengaluru-Mumbai route will commence from January 15, the airline said.
21/12/18 PTI/Economic Times

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UDAN scheme caught in a turbulence

The UDAN (Ude desh ka aam nagrik) scheme is passing through a turbulent phase in the state with many flight operations yet to start.

The much-publicised Kota-Delhi flight issue is yet to be resolved and the flight has not re-started. The department of civil aviation has also now intervened in the ongoing dispute between Airport Authority and Supreme Airlines. Additional chief secretary of department PK Goyal has written a letter to chairman of airport authority to start the operation of this flight.

 Apart from this, the Jaipur-Agra flight of Air Alliance has also stopped operating since March.

The flight was started with fanfare in December 2017 and was being said to be a good initiative which would link two tourist cities. However, it’s only after about 4 months that the flight has stopped.

Also the wait for Kishangarh-Delhi flight is getting longer with no flight to Delhi though this was the main demand of the people of Kishangarh and nearby areas.

Though process is on for a SpiceJet flight between the two cities, a few days ago a team of officials of SpiceJet had also visited the Kishangarh airport for resuming the flight operations from here. The airport which was seeing fight for Udaipur has also been stopped due to shortage of passengers.

Moreover, the Uttarlai (Barmer) Delhi flight is yet to start while Kishangarh-Udaipur flight has also stopped.

In April 2017, Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) UDAN  was launched. The objective was to connect the middle-class fliers living in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities with the various cities.
26/04/18 DNA

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Air India's last chance

New Delhi: In the 18 months that Arvind Jadhav has been the chairman of state-owned Air India, he has faced more than one crisis. Recently, the independent directors on the company’s board demanded the removal of Pawan Arora, the boss of Air India Express, the low-cost arm of the airline, for misrepresenting facts. The directive was opposed by Chief Operating Officer Gustav Baldauf who told Jadhav the procedure was not followed and Arora wasn’t given a chance to defend the allegations against him.
Meanwhile, Air India’s decision to shift domestic operations in Delhi to the new terminal, T3, before rivals turned out to be quite a disaster — there were huge cancellations, flight delays and of course harried customers.
Jadhav’s hands are tied. The airline’s survival is to a large extent dependent on the government which alone can bail it out of the financial mess. Air India has a working capital debt of over Rs 18,000 crore, which was being used to fund cash losses, and this is projected to go up to over Rs 30,000 crore within a few years, if the government’s support does not come quickly. This means higher interest payout.
Naturally, Jadhav has asked the government for help. His demands have not been met even halfway. The government has infused Rs 800 crore in equity, and has said that the next tranche of Rs 1,200 crore will only come if Air India meets the cost-reduction targets — something it hasn’t done so far.
29/11/10 Surajeet Das Gupta & Mihir Mishra/Business Standard

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