Air India to convert 5 Airbus A320's to all economy configuration

The National Aviation Company Ltd (Nacil), which runs state owned Air India, is planning to convert five of its Airbus 320 planes into low cost carriers under the Air India Express brand. The launches would be in the winter schedule and on 10 sectors. A normal A320 has 124 economy class seats and 20 business class seats. After the conversion, making it a full economy class plane, the number of seats increases to 168. These converted aircraft, say sources, would fly on 10 sectors. These include flights to Sharjah from Hyderabad, Cochin, Trivandrum, Amritsar and Lucknow, Calicut-Dubai, Chennai-Kuala Lumpur, and Chennai-Colombo.

 

An Air India spokesperson said the routes would be decided next week. However, industry sources say Calicut-Dubai and Chennai-Colombo are routes where there is a demand for business class. Business class flyers account for 12 per cent of the revenue and many say the strategy to move more and more aircraft into a single configuration could have an adverse impact on the company’s total revenues from these flights. Air India Express operates 193 weekly flights to 14 international destinations: Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, Al Ain, Muscat, Salalah, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Bahrain, Doha, Kuwait, Colombo and Dhaka from 17 Indian cities.

Air India to hedge jet fuel requirements

National carrier Air India may hedge a part of its fuel requirement for the first time in three years to guard its bottomline from any future fluctuation in the price of aviation turbine fuel. The spending on ATF is the biggest chunk almost 40% of an airline's operating expenses. "We have approval from the board to hedge nearly 25% of our fuel uplifts. If the prices are likely to increase, Air India would certainly look at hedging, at least a part of the uplift," said an AI spokesperson. A senior Air India official said the company will take up the issue once again at its board meeting on Wednesday, where it will discuss ways to cut costs and rationalise routes.

 

Although airlines across the globe resort to fuel hedging, a contractual agreement to buy fuel in future at a pre-determined rate, Indian companies have largely refrained from it. Air India was the first Indian airline to hedge its jet fuel requirements in March 2006. That time the company’s board set a hedging limit of 750,000 barrels a quarter. The company has not hedged its ATF requirements since then. Other domestic airlines started hedging their fuel needs only very recently, with Jet Airways, Kingfisher and SpiceJet hedging a small portion of their requirements in 2009 due to the high volatility in ATF prices in the global market.

Kingfisher Airlines flights delayed as ground handling staff strike work

A strike by the ground handling staff of Kingfisher Airlines on Monday saw most of its flights delayed by 30 minutes to one hour through the day. The staff reportedly refused to work on the ground of non-payment of outstanding dues by the airline. According to sources, the ground handlers called for a one day strike and hence several of them did not report for work on Monday. Even though other airline staff jumped in to salvage the situation, almost all flights were delayed by up to an hour. Ground handlers are responsible for almost all non-technical work of an airline, including loading and unloading of baggage from the aircraft, driving of trolleys, etc. While sources claimed that the issue was of non-payment of dues by the airline itself, Kingfisher officials said the issue was between the loaders and the previous ground handling agency (GHA) that the airline had employed.

JetLite aircraft returns to Kolkata due to engine trouble

A JetLite flight from Kolkata to Bangalore with 140 passengers on board returned to Kolkata's NSC Bose International Airport, 90 minutes after it had left, after one of its engines developed trouble, airport sources said. The JetLite flight left NSC Bose International Airport at 6.05pm for Bangalore. It landed safely back at NSC Bose around 7.30pm, they said.