Category Archives: Aviation

Indonesia’s national carrier, Garuda Indonesia has temporarily terminated its Mumbai operations. This marks the end of direct flight from the South Asian nation to Mumbai. However, the airline is hoping to revive the services by the end of this year, apart from looking at Delhi as the next destination in its network. Garuda had started the direct connection in April 2018. Earlier, the airline used to operate one-stop service to Mumbai from Jakarta via Bangkok, before starting a non-stop service Airbus A330 between Denpasar and Mumbai. The only connection which India shares with Indonesia now is from Chennai to Medan via Kuala Lumpur on Batik Air, part of the Lion Air group.

In a recent update, Emirates has reduced its frequency from Dubai to Thiruvananthapuram for its winter schedule of 2019/20 starting 27 October.  The overall frequency has been reduced from 11 to 7 weekly. Right now, two flights operate on Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday has a single flight deployed on this route. This route is operated by 2-class Boeing 777-300 ER aircraft.

IndiGo has announced new daily non-stop flights on Delhi-Agartala and Delhi-Dibrugarh routes, effective August 14.  IndiGo will be the first airline to fly on Delhi-Agartala route. Bookings on these routes are open with immediate effect. William Boulter, Chief Commercial Officer, IndiGo added, “IndiGo is committed to offering its leisure and business travellers an on-time, courteous and hassle-free service and affordable flying experience consistently.”

As per data released by the Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), GoAir posted 86.8% On Time Performance, the highest among scheduled domestic airlines. The airline has also carried 13.3 lakh passengers during the same month. The airline also clocked highest load factor of 94%.

According to DGCA, passengers carried by domestic airlines during Jan-June 2019 were 706.80 lakhs as against 684.83 lakhs during the corresponding period of previous year thereby registering a growth of 3.21%. However, the air traffic in the month of June alone rose by 6% surpassing May’s growth which was registered at 3%. According to DGCA, the passenger load factor in the month of Jun 2019 has shown marginally increasing trend compared to previous month due to ongoing tourist season.

Air Tanzania has launched its maiden direct flight from Dar es Salaam to Mumbai. This is the seventh international route for the airline and the first outside Africa. ATCL’s recently acquired Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner  departed the Julius Nyerere International Airport (JNIA) Terminal-III in Dar es Salaam for Mumbai at 7.30pm local time and arrived into India early morning. Passengers on the flight included a huge delegation from Tanzania including the minister for Works, Transport and Communications, Isaak Kamwelwe, senior government officials, ATCL staff and local journalists. Commenting on the developments, Kamwelwe expressed optimism that the new route would help in cutting the time spent by passengers who had to connect through Nairobi, Dubai and South Africa. Ladislaus Matindi, Managing Director, ATCL, said that a return ticket is available at what he termed the ‘entry’ price of $378.

Giving further fillip to Regional Connectivity in the country, 8 more routes became functional under UDAN. These routes include Mysore-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Mysore, Goa- Mysore, Mysore-Goa, Cochin-Mysore, Mysore-Cochin, Kolkata-Shillong. Shillong-Kolkata. With this, the total UDAN  routes Operational as on date increased to 194 routes.  

A study by International Air Transport Association (IATA) has revealed that in terms of air travel growth driven by emerging markets, India leads the pack with 18.9 per cent Revenue Passenger Kilometres (RPK) growth in 2018 as against 2017. China ranked second at 12.1 RPK, followed by Russia at 9.2 RPK.

Due to a Supreme Court order, construction of Goa’s Mopa Airport is expected to be commissioned in 2021. Developed jointly by the Goa government and GMR, the greenfield airport is planned in North Goa district and is expected to handle 30 million passenger traffic when it is fully operational. The first phase of the airport was expected to be completed in 2020. However, the Supreme Court had stopped work on-site after a petition alleged that thousands of trees were being illegally cut at the airport site by the developers. (Source: IANS)

Low-cost carrier GoAir has appointed Miranda Mills as its Chief Operating Officer, effective August. The former Airbus executive will report to Jeh Wadia, the airline’s Chief Executive Officer and Managing Director. Mills, an aeronautical engineer from University of Glasgow, spent 16 years with Airbus where she played several leading roles including Global Sales & Marketing Director and Sales Vice President for the commercial aircraft division for South Asia. She was also Chief Digital Officer & Director, Transformation – Civil Aerospace at Rolls-Royce. For some time now, the Mumbai-headquartered LCC GoAir, which operates 285 daily flights connecting 24 domestic cities and four international destinations, had unfilled posts at the helm.