Oman Air increases flights to Salalah during Khareef

Oman Air has increased flights to Salalah to carry more visitors to the summer Khareef season in the southern Dhofar region. It is running 25 flights a week between Muscat and Salalah, four from Dubai, and one from Kuwait.

Air India flight makes emergency landing in Delhi

An Air India flight to Hyderabad made an emergency landing in Delhi on Monday, an hour after taking off from the Indira Gandhi International Airport, when the pilot reported a technical snag. The Delhi-Hyderabad-Tirupati Air India flight 942, carrying 75 passengers, made an emergency landing at 11.40 a.m., said a spokesperson of the Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) that operates the Delhi airport. "All passengers are safe," he said and added that there were some problems in the hydraulic system of the aircraft. An Air India spokesperson said the pilot had decided to come back to Delhi midway as a precautionary measure as he suspected a technical snag.

India Post to go airborne

Around the first of July, two new aircraft bearing the logo of India Post will take off from Mumbai and Chennai. These freighters have been leased from Air India by India Post, under the ministry of communications. For this purpose, two of Air India's old Boeing 737-200s, have been converted into freighters, says Jitendra Bhargava, spokesperson of Air India. With a capacity of 15 tonnes each, the planes will connect cities like Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Ahmedabad, Surat and Nagpur. The cue for launching this service came from the success of India Post's first such aircraft which flies everything from handicrafts to foodgrain on the Kolkata-Guwahati route.

As a result of this aircraft, which was launched in August 2007, birthday gifts reached the same day, businesses prospered, and the seven North Eastern sisters were brought that much closer to mainstream India. The services of this existing aircraft will be extended from next month to cover Delhi and Nagpur. Three cities - Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will act as hubs for overnight transmission of mail. Every night before the freighters leave their centres at around 11:30 pm, all mail from nearby cities will reach them. The three Boeings will then converge at Nagpur and exchange palettes (metal sheets which carry mails sorted according to destination cities). The aircraft will then fly back with their respective palettes. When they touch down at their centres early next morning, local distribution services like trucks, trains and other airlines will take over.