Thirteen passengers and a four-member crew had a close shave on Saturday when a Kingfisher aircraft suffered tyre burst while landing at the Kamaraj domestic airport in Chennai.
The flight was bound for Tiruchirapalli but failed to land there due to bad weather and heavy rain. When the plane tried to land back in Chennai, one of its tyres burst and it got stuck on the runway.
Airport authorities confirmed that none of the thirteen passengers and a four-member crew suffered any injuries. Officials also said that the plane has a capacity to carry forty-eight passengers, but there were only thirteen passengers in the fateful flight.
Airport operations remained closed for more than two hours, till 02:30, as the plane couldn’t be immediately moved off the runway.
Detailing the incident, AAI Airport Director E P Hareendranathan said, “The plane was stranded on the runway till the tyres were replaced.”
The incident forced authorities to divert an incoming Lufthansa flight to Bangalore. Five flights scheduled for departure were also delayed.
Hareendranathan said that DGCA would launch a probe to find out the cause for the incident.
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NEW DELHI – A panel of senior Indian ministers tasked with overseeing a turnaround plan for Air India Ltd. will meet later this month to decide on the national carrier's order for 27 Dreamliner 787 planes from Boeing Co. , a top official at the civil aviation ministry said.
The meeting, scheduled for the week to Oct. 22, comes as Boeing gets set to deliver the first Dreamliner plane to Air India in this quarter, following a delay of more than three years. Air India wants to take the planes to expand its long-haul operations and intensify competition with carriers in the Middle East, Europe and the U.S.
"The group of ministers will discuss whether it makes commercial sense for Air India to buy the Dreamliners or not," the official said late Tuesday.
He said the government wants also to ensure that Air India has the financial capability to pay for the Dreamliner planes instead of seeking federal assistance in the future.
The panel will decide whether to ask Air India to cancel or defer the delivery of the Dreamliners, the official said. The list price for each Dreamliner aircraft as of 2010 was $185.2 million, but airlines usually get a discount on this price.
The 27 Dreamliners are part of a total of 111 planes ordered by Air India and the erstwhile Indian Airlines from Boeing and Airbus. Air India ordered 68 planes from Boeing in December 2005, and Indian Airlines ordered 43 planes from Airbus in February 2006. Air India and Indian Airlines were merged in 2007 to form Air India Ltd.
Air India has been incurring losses post its merger due to falling load factors and higher fuel costs. It was also hurt by the large aircraft order.
The Indian government has injected a total of 25 billion rupees ($510 million) into the carrier in the last two fiscal years and has assured another 12 billion rupees this fiscal year through March 2012.
Apart from the Dreamliners and three other Boeing planes, Air India has taken delivery of all the other aircraft in the 111-plane order. It is scheduled to take delivery of the first seven Dreamliners between November and March.
The panel of ministers, headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, will also discuss Air India's financial turnaround plan, which includes reworking its network, increasing its fleet size, restructuring debt, hiving off businesses into separate units and diverting excess workforce to the new units, the official said.
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...Indian ministers tasked with overseeing a turnaround plan for Air India Ltd. will meet later this month to decide on the national carrier's order for 27 Dreamliner 787 planes from Boeing Co. , a top official at the civil aviationministry said. ...
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Passengers swell by 18.6% on MoM basis, despite fuel price hike
For the Indian aviation industry, August 2011 appears to have been a good month. The passenger traffic increased by 18.6 per cent on a month-on-month basis, notwithstanding the aviation turbine fuel price hike and rupee depreciation in the last few weeks.
Directorate General of Civil Aviation data reflected that airlines carried 4.8 million passengers against 3.989 million passengers during the corresponding period a year ago. For the first eight months of the calendar year, airlines carried 39.7 million passengers marking a 20 per cent increase over the previous year.
But the increase in passenger load factor was in sharp contrast with the seat factor of the industry, which actually fell on a month-on-month basis. The seat factor measures the capacity utilisation and refers to the number of occupied seats. According to DGCA data, top airlines saw a sharp drop in the seat factors. Kingfisher and Jet seat factors fell to 76 per cent and 73 per cent respectively — a drop of 4 and 3 per cent respectively on a month-on-month basis.
The DGCA data also showed a jump in the available seat kilometres as opposed to the required seat kilometres. These numbers indicate the availability of seats against the demand. In August 2010, the ASKM was barely 8 per cent against a requirement of over 10 per cent. In 2011, the situation had reversed when ASKMs was about 17 per cent against the requirement of barely 15 per cent indicating that the industry was heading towards an excess capacity.
But, KPMG’s director (aviation) Amber Dubey said, “This typically happens when capacity additions happen. Airlines have learned their lessons well, and capacity additions are happening at 12 per cent per annum. Consequently, 80 per cent seat factor will be achievable in the third quarter when passenger yields tend to be high and when airlines make money.”
The industry meanwhile is passing through a rough patch. High fuel costs have prompted the country’s largest private air carrier to hike ticket prices. The fuel consumed by an aircraft presently costs Rs 60,000 per kilo litre. The squeeze on the industry has prompted the civil aviation ministry to exert pressure on the states to cut back on the sales taxes on aviation fuel. However, barring Chhattisgarh that levies a duty of just 4 per cent, other states are unwilling to rollback taxes in excess of 15 per cent.
Industry officials say there would be no respite on the financial squeeze in the immediate future unless the fuel prices come down. Fuel costs consume around 40 per cent of an airlines’ operating expenditure these days. The other high cost component in an airlines balance sheet is the cost of servicing lease rentals. With a bulk of the industry operating on either leased aircraft or with fleet acquired on foreign debt, a rupee depreciation of 12 per cent since the beginning of this year has hit them hard, official say.
The only carriers that would be in a position to somewhat absorb the shocks of exchange rate depreciation would be those with international operations, where foreign currency earnings act as a natural hedge against currency volatility.
By C Shivkumar Oct 03 2011 , New Delhi For the Indian aviationindustry, August 2011 appears to have been a good month. The passenger traffic increased by 18.6 per cent on a month-on-month basis, notwithstanding the aviation turbine fuel price hike and ...
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Analysts say mergers by India's airlines have not been successful so far because of their objectives: it's to either kill competition or acquire flying rights to fly international. In 2007 alone, Indian aviation saw three mergers -- Kingfisher Airlines ...
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Air India may hire new COO next January after Gustav Baldauf's resignation
NEW DELHI: State-run Air India will pick a new chief operating officer (COO) by January and prefer someone from the domestic industry, according to a top executive. The airline's board has also created a post of COO for its low-cost arm, Air India Express.
Cash-strapped Air India has been operating without a COO since February when expatriate Gustav Baldauf, who held the post with a hefty pay package, resigned following difference with the government. "We are looking for professionals from the Indian aviation industry this time and would not prefer to have a foreign national, mainly because you can't pay them anything below Rs 3 crore,"
Air India chairman and managing director Rohit Nandan said, adding that the new appointment would happen within four months.
The carrier has a debt of Rs 43,000 crore and accumulated losses of over Rs13,000 crore. It has not posted a profit since 2007. "We expect an Indian professional to understand both the milieu and the market better," Nandan said. Experts say the airline desperately needs someone with business acumen at the management level.
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