Thai to launch Bangkok-Dubai flights using new Airbus A330 aircraft

From 21st September, Thai will offer 10 weekly flights between Dubai and Bangkok on the all new Airbus A330-300 aircraft. Featuring an improved cabin layout for greater comfort, an extensive range of in-flight entertainment options including audio, video and games on personal seat monitors and 32' seat pitch in Economy plus convenient departure times, Thai's new Airbus A330-300 service is both enjoyable and reasonably priced. The A330-300 flights depart Dubai daily at 2240, arriving Bangkok 0805 the following day, with additional flights on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday departing 2000 arriving 0525 the following day. The Thai Airbus A330-300 features 263 Royal Economy class seats and 35 Royal Silk Business Class seats, increased seat width in Economy as well as fewer Business Class seats with greater seat pitch and enhanced in-flight comforts.

PC Power outlets are provided for all passengers, with one per Business Class seat and more than one per couple in Economy. In-Flight Entertainment is provided by Panasonic 3000i with audio video on demand in six languages in all classes, plus in-seat telephone. Royal Silk Business Class passengers flying Thai from Dubai until 19 November also enjoy two nights accommodation in Bangkok in a 5-star hotel for only AED 100 additional charge including American Breakfast and return hotel transfers in Bangkok. For Royal Economy Class passengers, a wide range of promotions are on offer until mid November, including Family, Golf, Honeymoon, Health, Medical, Leisure and Luxury options.

Indian Air Force opens new airfield at Ladakh near Chinese border

For the first time ever, the Indian Air Force landed an AN-32 transport aircraft at the Nyoma Advanced Landing Ground in eastern Ladakh, just 23 km from the Line of Actual Control (LAC) with China. The touchdown by the medium lift transport aircraft signifies India's capability to move its troops quickly to the forward areas, whenever required. The IAF move comes in the wake of reports of recent Chinese intrusions into the Indian side of the LAC, including airspace violations by their helicopters and painting Mandarin letters on rocks in red. The AN-32 aircraft, flown by Shaurya Chakra awardee Group Captain S C Chafekar and carrying Western Air Command (WAC) chief Air Marshal N A K Browne and Northern Army Commander Lt Gen P C Bhardwarj, landed at Nyoma at 0625 hours, WAC spokesperson Flt Lt Priya Joshi said in New Delhi.

Nyoma ALG is situated at an altitude of 13,300 feet above sea level and is the third such ALG opened by IAF in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir in the last two years. The ALGs opened earlier were Daulat Beg Oldi, the world's highest airfield at 16,200 feet, in May last year and Fuk Che in November that year. The IAF had, before this AN-32 landing, used Nyoma airstrip only for helicopter operations. Only recently, the IAF took up work to convert it into an ALG for transport fixed-wing aircraft operations by laying a compacted airstrip, IAF officials said. "After deliberating on all aspects and carrying out aerial and ground reccees, it was concluded that Nyoma could be developed for fixed wing operations as well," Joshi said. An Engineer Regiment of the Army's 14 Corps executed the task of developing the ALG to standards required for fixed wing operations.

"The successful landing of a fixed wing aircraft at Nyoma marks the culmination of joint effort by the IAF and Army to enable the IAF to operate in the inhospitable terrain of Leh-Ladakh region in support of the Army," she said. "The joint development of Nyoma, braving the extremely difficult working conditions and hostile weather, is yet another step towards enhanced jointmanship between the two services," she added. Joshi said Nyoma was developed with an aim to connect the remote areas of Ladakh region to the mainland. "This would also ensure that movements in the area continue when the road traffic gets affected, during the harsh winters besides enabling improved communication network in the region, facilitating economical ferrying of supplies as well as promotion of tourism to the general area," she added.

American Airlines to charge for checked in baggage on flights from India

Flying is all set to get more expensive with the concept of pay for check-in baggage arriving in India this week. One of US' biggest carriers, American Airlines, has from Monday discontinued the earlier practice of allowing economy passengers to check in two bags of up to 23 kg each for no charge. The airline, which flies between Delhi and Chicago, will now charge $50 for the second bag and $150 for the third one, said the airline's call centre. Aviation industry insiders say the concept had been prevalent in US and Europe for a while and it was only a matter of time before cash-strapped airlines here too start levying it. "It is a new trend that has come to India. So far only American has told us of this change. Very soon, other airlines, including domestic low cost carriers, could start levying it here too."

"Nothing will come for free to flyers," said Rajendra Rai, president of the Travel Agents Association of India. American's website said, "Customers purchasing economy class tickets on or after September 14 for travel between India and US may check one bag for no charge and the second bag for $50." The airline's call centre said the first bag allowed to be checked in for free should weigh up to 23 kg. "If that bag is over 23 kg and below 32 kg, a charge of $50 will be for being overweight. Similarly, if the second or third bags also weighs between 23 kg and 32 kg, then a similar fee of $50 will be levied on each in addition to the additional bag charge of $50 and $150," said the call centre for economy class passengers. People flying out of India can pay in rupees.

Foreign carriers, especially US airlines, had earlier this year started levying charge for both internal and international flights. Many even levy a charge of $20-30 for the first check-in bag. LCCs abroad, like Britain's Ryan Air, also make passengers pay for check-in baggage. "Airlines have suffered huge losses in past two years and now are looking at every possible way of increasing revenue generation. Jet Airways chief Naresh Goyal always used to say that charging for food onboard is not possible as that's like charging for lunch and dinner that's served at home to guests. But he had to change that philosophy for his LCC when airlines flew into a financial bad weather. So nothing is impossible," said an airline CEO.

Kingfisher Airlines starts Mumbai-Hong Kong flight

Kingfisher Airlines flagged off services between Hong Kong and Mumbai with its inaugural flight taking off from Hong Kong's Chek Lap Kok Airport on Wednesday. Mr. Ravi Nedungadi, Director, Kingfisher Airlines Limited said, "A growing number of travellers from India to Hong Kong and the South East Asia are demanding more choice, greater luxury and better value for money when choosing flights for business and leisure trips to India. There is tremendous potential for this route which Kingfisher Airlines is committed to develop with its new aircraft and superior service." Earlier in the day, the maiden flight of Kingfisher Airlines was welcomed by Howard Eng, executive director, Airport Operations, Hong Kong International Airport.

JetLite aircraft makes emergency landing in Kolkata

A JetLite plane with 47 passengers landed under emergency conditions at Kolkata's NSC Bose International Airport shortly after taking off for Patna due to malfunctioning of a wheel. Airport sources said the flight took off but one of its wheels did not retract during the ascent forcing the pilot to ask the Air Traffic Controller for permission for emergency landing. All the arrangements for emergency landing were made and the plane landed safely.

Indigo Airlines to launch Hyderabad-Patna flight

Indigo airlines will start thrice weekly services from Hyderabad to Patna via Delhi from September 17. The new flight will leave Hyderabad at 0935 and reach Patna at 1415 via Delhi, where it will land at 1145. The return flight will leave Patna at 1445 and reach Hyderabad at 1905. It will halt at Delhi at 1615. The flight will operate on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.

SAS Scandinavian Airlines plans more flights to Middle East

The multinational airline of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, SAS Scandinavian Airlines plans to expand in the Middle East and to South Asia by using Dubai as its regional hub. The carrier plans to increase the frequency on its current Dubai flights because 'Dubai is a good and increasing market and the region is becoming more and more important for us,' according to Albert Henschel, the airline's UAE manager.

Royal Jordanian and Siberian Airlines sign codeshare agreement

Royal Jordanian has signed a unilateral Free Sale codeshare Agreement with the largest Russian domestic carrier, Siberia airlines, where S7 will place its code on RJ flights operated on Amman-Domodedovo-Amman route. The agreement will enable RJ to operate three flights a week, which will run on on Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays. The carriers plan to expand the agreement to be bilateral once the necessary approvals for the Moscow, St Petersburg sectors are ready.

Emirates and V Australia sign code share agreement

Dubai based Emirates and Virgin Blue Group's new international airline, V Australia, have announced a code share partnership on the trans-Tasman route, effective 25th October 2009. The code share agreement; Emirates' first with an Australian carrier will provide V Australia guests seamless connections when travelling between New Zealand and the USA.

Oman Air takes delivery of its first Airbus A330 aircraft

Oman Air has taken delivery of the first of seven ordered Airbus A330-200s, as part of the airline's international network expansion. The new aircraft, which was acquired through a lease agreement with Dublin based AWAS, is powered by Rolls Royce Trent 700 engines and is configured with 20 business class and 196 economy class seats. By the end of this year, the Sultanate's national carrier's fleet will feature two A330-200s and two A330-300s. During 2010-11, the airline will take an extra three A330-300s.

Air Arabia Egypt to start flights by year end

The recently announced low-cost airline formed by Egypt's Travco Group and UAE-based Air Arabia may launch operations by the end of 2009 from as many as five Egyptian airports, Travco's chief executive has said. The new airline, Air Arabia Egypt, will seek Egyptian government permission to use airports at Cairo, Alexandria, Luxor, Hurghada and Sharm el-Sheikh. The company will lease aircraft from Air Arabia or other sources, he said.

Kingfisher Airlines flight lands in Mumbai with technical snag

A Bangalore bound Kingfisher flight with 96 passengers on board today returned to Mumbai after being airborne for 12 minutes following a technical snag in the aircraft's landing gear, an airport official said. The Kingfisher flight, IT 103 Mumbai-Bangalore, made a normal landing and all passengers are safe, MIAL spokesperson Maneesh Kalghatgi said. "The flight took off at 0905 hours for Bangalore and returned at 0917 hours due to its landing gear not retracting," he said.

All Nippon Airways (ANA) signs outsourcing deal with Wipro

Wipro Ltd, India's No. 3 outsourcing firm, said that it has won a three-year outsourcing contract from All Nippon Airways (ANA), Japan's No.2 carrier. The company did not provide financial details of the contract. ANA, with its fleet of 209 aircraft, is the first airline in the world to procure the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. It is embarking on transforming its legacy materials management system to support the new fleet, in line with the expansion of its business at Tokyo`s Haneda Airport with its upcoming fourth runway in 2010. Wipro will deliver materials management system to ANA that will help proactively manage the parts life cycle. The system will strengthen regulatory compliance, predict parts demand better and help manage inventory levels. The new Materials Management system will be built in a scalable, flexible platform. The state of the art system will help ANA increase its cost competitiveness, improve the quality of its aircraft part maintenance business and improve asset management.

Wipro will manage the complete program, delivering services such as Application Development, Program Management and Vendor management thereby enabling ANA to gain a sustainable competitive advantage. Commenting on selecting Wipro as a strategic partner, Takanori Yukishige, SVP ANA Information Technology Services said, "We are starting a new journey and this program will set a benchmark for our future way of doing business. We look forward to further leveraging our partnership with Wipro to gain competitive advantage." Hiroshi Alley, President & Representative Director, Wipro Japan said, "It is a significant engagement for us and will be a driver for increased penetration in the growing Japan outsourcing market."

Jet Airways offers 50% discounted fares for limited period

Jet Airways, India’s premier international airline, and Jet Airways Konnect, Jet Airways’ all economy no-frills service, will offer a promotional fare that reflects a 50% discount on its total fare in Economy class across all domestic flights. With limited seats under this offer, the sale of these special fares will be between September 14 and September 16, 2009. Travel needs to be completed by September 18, 2009. These bookings can be made through any travel agent, our call centre or on www.jetairways.com. JetPrivilege members will earn 1000 Bonus JPMiles for all bookings made on jetairways.com during the offer period. According to Mr. Wolfgang Prock-Schauer, CEO, Jet Airways, "With these new low, limited-time fares, we hope to welcome travellers back aboard Jet Airways' and Jet Airways Konnect's extensive domestic services, which cover the length and breadth of the country between them."

Jet Airways to go low cost soon

In one months’ time, Jet Airways is scheduled to morph into a largely no-frills airline with over two thirds of its seating capacity on its 86 planes transferred to a new service called Jet Konnect. The Rs 11,450-crore airline is hoping that the makeover will change its fortunes after racking up a post-tax loss of Rs 225 crore on its domestic and overseas operations in the first quarter ended June 30. The Jet Konnect service was introduced in May with nine of the airline’s 48 Boeing 737s the workhorse in the Jet fleet and 10 ATR planes and accounted for one-third of the airline’s seating capacity. By October, the airline plans to have 16 B-737s and 10 ATRs operating under the Jet Konnect service which effectively means two-thirds of the airline will be a no-frills service.

As part of the changeover, Jet has been ripping out the business class seats from its planes and moving to a single class configuration, thereby raising the seating capacity on these planes by 20 to 25 per cent. Jet has 33,000 seats on offer every day on its domestic flights which will go up to 38,000 seats once all the 16 B-737s convert to a single configuration for the Jet Konnect service. It isn’t only the full service airline that has started concentrating on low-yield passengers. Air India is also looking to enter aggressively into this space which means loads of competition for budget carriers such as IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir.

Air India' reschedules Thiruvananthapuram-Mumbai flight timing

Air India has rescheduled the flight between Thiruvananthapuram and Mumbai to provide convenient connections to international passengers taking onward journey from Mumbai. Flight IC-162, which is now departing at 6.45 pm has been rescheduled to depart at 5.20 pm. The flight, which departs from Thiruvananthapuram at 5.20 pm will reach Kochi at 6.05 pm. It will depart from Kochi at 6.45 pm and will arrive Mumbai at 8.40 pm.

India Post Cargo all set to start flying

The Minister for Civil Aviation, Mr Praful Patel, and the Minister for Communications and Information and Technology, Mr A. Raja, are together making an Indian dream come true, parcels being delivered any where in the country within 24 hours of posting. This will happen with the official launch in Chennai on Sunday of India Post’s country-wide services using Air India Cargo aircraft. India Post has been given Air India Cargo’s three Boeing 737-200 aircraft of the 1970s vintage to cover the North-East. The three planes, which earlier used to fly for Alliance Air, can together carry 40 tonnes of mail which will be sorted at the hub in Nagpur before being airlifted on an AI cargo freighter to the airport closest to the ultimate destination of a parcel. Mr Patel and Mr Raja hope that with this move, India Post will be able to take on the global express industry players (DHL, TNT, UPS and FedEx) that are seeking to expand in India.

Singapore Airlines & Air India sign frequent flier partnership

Air India and Singapore Airlines have signed a bilateral agreement that would enable passengers of either carrier to earn and redeem miles on flights operated by the other. Under the new agreement, effective from tomorrow, frequent flyers on Singapore Airlines and Air India would be able to earn and redeem miles on flights operated by either carrier. The agreement comes in the wake of efforts by the national carrier to fulfil the conditions of joining the Star Alliance, of which SIA is a founder member. Air India has already been invited to join the global alliance, which was formed in 1997 and has a membership of 26. The agreement means that members of SIA's KrisFlyer programme would be able to earn KrisFlyer miles when they fly with Air India, or choose to redeem their miles for flights with the Indian carrier, an SIA statement said.

Likewise, members of Air India's Flying Returns programme would enjoy greater choice by having the option of using their miles on the Singaporean carrier or earning miles when they fly on it, it said. "Singapore Airlines is pleased to welcome Air India on board. The addition of Air India as a KrisFlyer partner boosts the number of carriers we have such agreements with to 28. "Those who fly frequently with Singapore Airlines and Air India now have more opportunity to increase their frequent flyer miles, and more choice in deciding how best to use their miles," Huang Cheng Eng, Singapore Airlines' Executive Vice President Marketing and the Regions, said. SIA operates 42 times a week to six destinations in India. With the inclusion of subsidiary carrier SilkAir, the Singapore Airlines route network covers 93 destinations in 38 countries.

Jet Airways stir ends, flight operations limping back to normalcy

Jet Airways pilots and management reached an agreement late Saturday night, ending the five day old stir. The breakthrough in the impasse between the pilots, who had begun their agitation on Tuesday protesting the sacking of their colleagues, came after a marathon meeting here lasting more than ten hours. Jet Airways Executive Director Saroj Dutta said flight operations of the airline on international routes would resume immediately while the domestic services would normalize by noon on Sunday. Announcing the settlement at a news conference, the pilots’ union National Aviators Guild leader Sam Thomas, flanked by Jet Airways Executive Director Saroj Dutta and NAG President Girish Kaushik, said it has been agreed that the four sacked pilots would be reinstated with immediate effect.

A consultative group would be set up comprising the Jet CEO Hafiz Ali, two directors of the airlines, two representatives of flight operations and five pilots to continue the process of dialogue on all outstanding issues as well those which will come up. Asked about losses suffered by the airline during the five days of the agitation, Dutta no estimates have been done as yet. However, Jet's daily revenue of eight million dollars "had dropped dramatically" and the number of passengers came down from 23,000 per day to 7,500. On the contentious issue of the pilots' right to form a union, Kaushik said in reply to a question that there was no question of dissolving the NAG which is already a registered body.

The Registrar of Trade Unions is reviewing the NAG's registration and if the decision goes against the pilots, they would not pursue it. "If there is discrepancy, it is left to the Registrar or the law of the land", Kaushik said and Thomas added "we will not pursue the matter afresh." The problems between the two sides would be resolve through the consultative group while the Society for Welfare of Indian Pilots, formed about a decade ago, would address the welfare issues, the two NAG leaders said. While all the four dismissed pilots would be taken back, no punitive action against any one who participated in the agitation.

Flights remain cancelled as Jet Airways strike continues

As many as 150 Jet Airways flights, including 15 international, remained cancelled on Friday, the fourth day of the ongoing strike by the airline pilots. A spokesperson said early on Friday that the airline has announced plans to cancel around 30 flights on certain sectors which will either be combined or re-booked. These include services on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Vadodra, Mumbai-Mangalore, Mumbai-Bengaluru, Mumbai-Kochi, Mumbai-Chennai and Mumbai-Bhopal sectors in the western region. In the eastern region, the airline will operate services on the Kolkata-Jorhat, and Kolkata-Agartala sectors. In the northern region, it plans to operate services on the Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi-Udaipur sectors. In the southern region, services shall be operated on the Chennai-Coimbatore sectors.

However, important metro sectors like the Mumbai-Delhi, Chennai-Delhi, Kolkata-Delhi and Mumbai-Kolkata remained crippled for the fourth day, inconveniencing passengers. The airline on Thursday had cancelled nearly 240 services across the network as over 500 pilots reported 'sick.' However, the National Aviators Guild (NAG) expressed its willingness to resume duties if the four pilots sacked by the airline management are re-instated. The striking pilots are to hold talks with the chief labour commissioner and the management in New Delhi Friday. So far, the four-day strike has led to the cancellation of nearly 700 flights, causing hardship to over 28,000 passengers.