22. February 2007


Date: 22. Feb. 2007
First the bad news: Even after the merger, the Air India-Indian Airlines combined aircraft fleet strength would be considered small by international standards as the merged airline may not even feature in the top 20 airlines in terms of fleet size.
By 2011, much against the profit-making mantras touted by aviation pundits the merged entity would have an amazingly diverse fleet of aircraft, complete with Boeing 747-400s, Boeing 777-200LRs, Boeing 787 Dreamliners, A320s, A319s and A321s - enough representation, one can say, from both the warring aircraft families.
What is heartening though, is that India will finally have an airline with a 100-plus aircraft fleet, that can measure up to the Asian biggies like Air China, China Southern Airlines, All Nippon Airways etc when it comes to fleet size (see box) and turnover.
Presently, Air India and Indian Airlines have a fleet strength of 48 and 75 respectively. Both have placed a total order for 111 aircraft, all of which would be delivered by 2011.
"But as both these airlines have a seizable number of ageing aircraft, the next few years, will also see a lot of phasing out happening,"says a top Air India official. For instance: By 2011, after all the new aircraft join in, Air India's fleet strength would still be only 75.
"Only six Boeing 747-400 out of the present fleet of 48 aircraft will be retained. The rest will be phased out. Some A310s will be converted into freighters,"he adds.
Even if Indian Airlines has, say 80 aircraft by 2011, then the combined fleet of the merged entity would add up to about 150 aircraft. "That would be enough to bring us close to All Nippon Airways which is the 20th large airline in terms of fleet size with 156 aircraft,"he adds.
Aviation analysts say managing diverse fleet of aircraft would be one of the challenges of the merger. "There is hardly any scope for merger in the engineering department of these two airlines. No spare parts sharing, no transferring engineers, no combined overhaul workshops etc,"says an airline official.
"It's important a factor considering the present-day shortage of spare parts,"he adds. Ditto with cockpit crew sharing.
"Indian Airlines does not have single foreign pilot, while Air India Express has as much as 70 foreign pilots. Both these airlines are large operators of short capacity short range (SCSR) aircraft. While Indian operates A320s, AI Express operates Boeing 737s and the cockpit crew just cannot be interchanged,"he adds.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com


Date: 21. Feb. 2007
Air Deccan’s (AD) Captain Gopinath says that his dream is to have people fly for free, and hopes that one day ancillary income would make this possible-this is catering revenue, advertising revenue, other types of income that airlines can generate besides seat charges.
That the aircraft body can be a medium like a billboard was first demonstrated by Goinath’s. airline in India and was one of the initiatives taken by AD in that direction. Today, AD announced in Bangalore that it has awarded the fleet graphics for aircraft branding contract to ADC World Advertising for a period of five years. This means big money potential to the Airline and how.
“We will be flying around 8 million passengers this year - this means 16 million eyeballs.” said Gopinath.
While refusing to disclose the size of the revenues that aircraft branding generates, AD principal sales & marketing officer, Samyukth Sridharan explained “We currently have 19 A380’s and 20 ATR’s. Branding an aircraft is not as simple as it seems. We have to take into account the cost of paints, the additional weight of the paint added and the additional fuel required for that, well taking all these into account, if I were asked to offer a single aircraft – I’d charge Rs 1 million a month for an A380 and half that amount for an ATR, do the math yourself, and this is just the outside of the aircraft.”.
Gopinath and his team are looking at all avenues for generating ancillary revenues and growing them from the current 9% to between 25-30% of annual revenues over the next three years. They are looking at web-enabled insurance, excess baggage, which currently brings them around Rs.35-36 per passenger on a average, in-flight shopping, and in-flight catering.
“I think in-flight sales on Air Deccan contribute about 12% to Café Coffee Day’s present revenues,” informed Sidharan.. AD receives around 24,000 calls daily for bookings. At the end of the call, our people offer ICIC credit cards or loans, this too will help generate ancillary income for us,” he added.
Source: http://www.indiantelevision.com


Date: 22. Feb. 2007
India's largest private airline company Jet Airways will make a stopover in Brussels for its flights between Mumbai and New York in the US, according to local media reports.
The service that is due to start this August will provide the first direct air link between Belgium and India, says INEP.
At present travellers to India from Belgium have to take connecting flights from other cities including Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam.
Next to the link Mumbai-Brussels-New York, Jet Airways also intends to start a connection between New Delhi and Toronto before 2007-end.
This connection will also have a stop over in Brussels, "Flandernews.com" reported.
However, in the Jet Airways office in Brussels there was nobody to confirm the report as the management was in a meeting.
The tourism minister from the Flanders region of Belgium, Geert Bourgeois, currently visiting India, met Indian tourism minister Ambika Soni and the management of Jet Airways in Mumbai.
Since 2002, the number of outbound Indian tourists has annually grown by 12 per cent. It is estimated that by 2010, some 11.5 million Indians will take a holiday abroad.
The northern Belgium region of Flanders hopes to get a piece of the large Indian pie. Figures show that between 2001 and 2005, the number of Indian tourists to Flanders region has risen by over 30 percent.
Bourgeois believes the new air link may well prove to be a strong incentive for Indian tourism towards Flanders.
The minister said that in order to promote the new link, he would encourage cooperation between Tourism Flanders and Jet Airways.
In this respect, Bourgeois suggested the opening of a Tourism Flanders office in India might be appropriate, Flandernews said.
"I am deeply convinced we can tempt the Indian tourist with our unique range of art cities on such a small surface," he said.
Bourgeois further aims to highlight Flanders as a destination for war and peace tourism from 2014 onwards. The year 2014 marks the centenary of the start of World War I. There are many World War graves in the area.
Source: http://economictimes.indiatimes.com


Date: 22. Feb. 2007
The Mangalore Airport which recently turned into International Airport is now slowly going to be one of the busy airport in India. New flights are introducing their services every day.
Mangalore to Dubai, Mangalore to Abudhabi, Mangalore to Muscat and Mangalore to Doha Qatar and Bahrain are on schedule but more new services are coming up with lots of facilities for Mangalore passengers.
Now Air Deccan will begin its new flights from Mangalore to Mumbai from March 25. In a press release, company stated that Air Deccan which has made a mark by providing service with minimum fare will begin the flight form Mumbai at 1.15 pm. The flight will reach Mangalore at 2.30 pm and it will leave Mangalore at 3 pm to arrive in Mumbai at 4.15 pm.
Air Deccan is the second biggest Indian low cost airliner and in 2006 it had 19.7 per cent of the market share. It has more than 300 flight movements in a day in 60 airports of the country, the release added.
Source: http://www.sahilonline.org