China Eastern Airlines to increase frequency and open new routes from India

China Eastern Airlines, which currently connects two Indian cities, Delhi and Kolkata, with Shanghai, Beijing and Kunming in China is planning to increase its frequency of operations to India from next month. The airline will add one more flight on its Delhi-Shanghai- Beijing route, which currently has a frequency of four flights a week. It will also increase the frequency from three flights a week to daily on the Kolkata-Kunming by the end of next month. Although final clearances are still awaited, the airline sources are hopeful of positive response from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).
According to Edward Zhu Xuemin, Chief Representative-India, China Eastern Airlines Kunming as a tourist destination has a long history, as well as a lot to offer in terms of tourism products. “Our Kolkata –Kunming flight offers the shortest connectivity. It takes hardly two-and-half hours by air. Kunming also offers excellent connectivity to other destinations in mainland China. We can offer good packages to travellers from Delhi and Kolkata to Kunming and Shanghai, etc.,” stated Xuemin while addressing a recent meeting between members of the Indian travel trade and a delegation of Kunming Municipal Tourism Bureau and its travel trade members in Delhi.

Paramount Airlines wants to fly national by 2011

In spite of the aviation sector being under pressure, south India-based Paramount Airways wants to become a national carrier by 2011.
Paramount has seen considerable success in southern India with a 26% market share. It is this success that it hopes to replicate in other parts of India, particularly Mumbai, Pune, and Goa. It has already taken its first step towards this.
Paramount Airways has launched its western India operations. The company is looking to start operations in the interiors of Gujarat covering areas such as Jamnagar and Bhuj. Once it gains ground, the company is headed northward. M Thiagarajan, Managing Director, Paramount Airways said, ?After we gain a considerable market share here, we plan to head north up to Srinagar and the north-east. We hope to become a national presence by 2011.”

Russian Aviation authority suspends 737 flights

Russia’s aviation authority has suspended flights aboard Boeing 737s until their pilots receive additional training after a recent deadly crash, an official said Thursday.

All 88 people aboard a Boeing 737-500 died when the plane operated by the Russian Aeroflot-Nord crashed Sept. 14 while preparing to land in the city of Perm in the Ural Mountains area.

Federal Agency of Air Transport spokesman Sergei Samoshin said Thursday the agency has suspended flights by planes similar to the one that crashed until their pilots can undergo more training on simulators.

Samoshin said that Russian carriers now operate 107 Boeing 737s. He would not say how many of them would be affected or specify how long the suspension would last.

The RIA Novosti news agency said the measure referred to a subtype of Boeing 737-500 which is in service with six Russian carriers. It did not say how many planes would be affected.

The training is necessary to make sure that all pilots properly read a key indicator showing the plane’s attitude, the so-called attitude indicator or artificial horizon, Samoshin said.

The attitude indicator is designed differently on Soviet-made planes and Western airliners.

Transport officials initially blamed the crash in Perm on a faulty engine that caught fire, but the investigating committee said it had found no sign of engine fire or other malfunction.

Investigators have yet to determine what caused the crash – Russia’s worst air disaster in two years. Aviation experts and observers said the crash was likely caused by a pilot error.

Perm flight controller Irek Bikbov said in remarks broadcast by state-run Channel One television on the day of the crash that the plane’s pilot was behaving strangely, disobeying orders to descend on the final approach and instead taking the jet to a higher altitude. Bikbov said he then ordered the pilot to make a second run, but instead of making the right turn he turned left. When the controller asked the pilot if things were normal on board, the pilot answered positively.

Some experts say the pilot’s strange behavior could have been caused by his failure to properly read the attitude indicator’s reading which could have led to a dangerous maneuver and then crash. The pilot of the plane which crashed in Perm had flown Soviet-made planes before and had relatively little experience in piloting Boeings.

Boeing spokesman Jim Proulx declined comment, saying company officials so far had only seen news reports out of Moscow and needed to get more information.

German commandos storm KLM jet, arrest two

German commandos stormed a KLM airliner at Cologne-Bonn airport on Friday, arresting two men suspected of wanting to carry out attacks, police said.

The Amsterdam-bound jet was stormed at 6:55 am (0455 GMT), police spokesman Frank Scheulen said.

A 23-year-old Somali and a 24-year-old German citizen of Somali origin were arrested, said Scheulen, spokesman for North Rhine-Westphalia state police.

Media reports said the two men had left notes in their apartments saying they were prepared to die in “holy war” and that they had been under police surveillance for several months.

WizzAir to launch 6 new routes from Poland

WizzAir last week announced new expansion out of Poland this winter, with 6 new routes.

All services will be operated twice a week

eff 27OCT08 Warsaw – Bologna
eff 27OCT08 Katowice – Bologna
eff 28OCT08 Gdansk – Rome Fiumcino
eff 16DEC08 Poznan – Rome Fiumcino
eff 19DEC08 Poznan – Cork
eff 17JAN09 Poznan – Milan Bergamo

3 New Jet Airways Domestic routes

Jet Airways on 15SEP08 launched 3 new domestic routes out of Hyderabad

Hyderabad – Pune
9W3446 HYD2050 – 2305PNQ AT7 D
9W3441 PNQ0600 – 0815HYD AT7 D

Hyderabad – Visakhapatnam
9W3442 HYD0900 – 1030VTZ AT7 D
9W3443 VTZ1100 – 1230HYD AT7 D

Hyderabad – Goa
9W3444 HYD1335 – 1530GOI AT7 D
9W3445 GOI1600 – 1735HYD AT7 D

Jet Airways relaunch Bengaluru – Pune

Jet Airways on 11SEP08 relaunched Bengaluru (Bengalore) – Pune service

9W445 BLR1130 – 1255PNQ 738 x6
9W459 BLR2130 – 2250PNQ 73G D

9W460 PNQ0620 – 0740BLR 73G D
9W446 PNQ1340 – 1455BLR 738 x6

Virgin Atlantic reduce Los Angeles flight

Virgin Atlantic is operating London – Los Angeles flight at reduced frequency from 19JAN09 to 28MAR09.

The reduction is mainly on VS023/024, operating 3-6 weekly service depending on the particular week

Virgin Atlantic 340-600 to Mauritius

From 05DEC08 to 10JAN09, Virgin Atlantic’s 2 weekly London – Mauritius flight is planned to be operated by A340-600, instead of A340-300

Air Jamaica increase Montego Bay – New York

Air Jamaica from 06DEC08 operates 2 Daily on the Montego Bay – New York JFK one-way route, an increase from 11 weekly.

The increase is on JM009

BA Cityflyer adds 5th Daily Glasgow flight

BA Cityflyer is adding 5th Daily flight on the London City – Glasgow route from 27OCT08, offering early morning flight from London and late evening service from Glasgow

The new flight is:

BA8720 LCY0650 – 0815GLA AR1 x67
BA8729 GLA2010 – 2140LCY AR1 x567

Arik in talks for A340-500s as Kingfisher retrenches

Nigeria’s Arik Air is to take over part of Kingfisher Airlines’ Airbus A340-500 order as the Indian carrier seeks to reduce capacity in an effort to cut costs and stem losses.

A source at Arik Air says the airline is in negotiation with Airbus for two new A340-500s: “We are buying the aircraft from Airbus, they are ex-Kingfisher,” the source told Flight’s Commercial Aviation Online.

Kingfisher placed orders in 2006 for five A340-500s along with five options, the first of which have been awaiting delivery in Toulouse. However, at Farnborough in July, chairman Vijay Mallya revealed that Kingfisher was planning to sell at least two of the ultra-long-range aircraft this year.

The Mumbai-based airline, which is in the process of integrating operations with low-cost carrier Deccan, is also returning some leased aircraft and seeking 300 voluntary redundancies.

“Upon rationalising the route network of the airline and having closely examined aircraft utilisation, we have identified surplus aircraft that are now redundant and are therefore being returned to lessors,” says Kingfisher. It adds that the cost-reduction drive has taken on greater urgency because of “the ongoing turbulence faced by the aviation industry”.

Arik Air has approval to serve London Heathrow and is expected to start operations this autumn. It is also cleared to start US services in April. The airline’s expansion plan includes the acquisition of more than 50 new aircraft over the next 10-15 years. According to Flight’s ACAS database, Arik Air has firm orders for 12 Boeing long-haul aircraft – five 777-300ERs and seven 787-9s, as well as commitments for four 747-8Is.

Delta, NWA shareholders to vote on merger

Delta and Northwest shareholders to vote on combination to create world’s biggest carrier with shareholder votes at both companies Thursday expected to overwhelmingly back the deal combining the two. Northwest Airlines Corp. shareholders were to vote on the stock-swap deal with Delta Air Lines Inc. at their annual meeting in New York, perhaps the last in the 82-year-old airline’s history before it is swallowed by its larger rival.

Delta shareholders were set to meet near Atlanta in the afternoon to vote on whether to issue stock to Northwest shareholders as part of the transaction.

Northwest shareholders will get 1.25 shares of Delta stock for each share they own if the combination is completed. That values Northwest at roughly $2.8 billion, based on Delta’s current stock price and the 277 million Northwest shares outstanding or still to be issued as part of its bankruptcy reorganization plan. That’s about $800 million less than the value when the deal was announced April 14.

The combined airline would be called Delta and keep its Atlanta headquarters and its chief executive, Richard Anderson. Northwest would become a wholly owned subsidiary of Delta during the integration process. Delta hopes to obtain a single Federal Aviation Administration operating certificate in 15 to 18 months.

The new airline would be the biggest in the world in terms of traffic and biggest in the U.S. in terms of annual revenue, which was a combined $31.7 billion at the end of last year.

American Airlines codeshares with Jet Airways

American Airlines has issued a notice that it’ll codeshare on Jet Airways’ new Brussels – Bangalore route when the latter launch the service at the end of October.

Jet codeshares with Brussels Airlines to fly Paris, Manchester

Jet Airways today announced expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines to connect Paris and Manchester from October 26, with the flights operating via the Belgian airline’s European hub in Brussels.

Manchester is Jet Airways’ second codeshare destination in the UK, after Birmingham, in addition to the airline’s direct daily services to London from Mumbai, Delhi and Amritsar.

With the expansion of its existing codeshare arrangement, the premier private carrier now offers connectivity between Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai, on one hand, and Birmingham, Madrid, Barcelona, Lyon, Berlin Tempelhof, Paris and Manchester, via Brussels, on the other, through its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines.

“With the expansion of its codeshare agreement with Brussels Airlines, Jet Airways now offers its passengers enhanced connectivity on the India-Europe sector, via its world-class, passenger-friendly hub in Brussels,” Jet CEO Wolfgang Prock-Schauer said in a statement and claimed that his airline was “fast becoming the carrier of choice for passengers on the sector”.

Jet flies daily to Brussels from three gateway points of Mumbai, Delhi and Chennai.

The private carrier, with a fleet of 85 aircraft, currently has codeshare agreements with Brussels Airlines, American Airlines, Air Canada, Qantas, ANA and Etihad, offering its passengers unmatched connectivity across Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia and Japan from India.

Air India puts European hub plan on backburner

Huge accumulated losses and a merger that’s yet to lead to the promised mega national carrier has forced Air India to defer its plans for setting up a hub in Europe.

Till some time back, the national carrier had zeroed in on two sites—Munich and Frankfurt—and was to choose one of them. Now with flights curtailed and no global expansion in sight till next winter, the European hub has been put on the backburner.

The idea of a European hub was to provide scissor operations there by taking passengers from different Indian cities and then providing connections to North America, like Jet does at Brussels.

“But at present we are not adding any flights so there’s no question of setting up this hub in a hurry. We will again start the process of selecting a city when the time is ripe,” said a top AI official. In fact, AI is not the only one to defer its plan for a hub. Jet is also reliably learnt to be keen on strengthening its Brussels hub first by linking it to Bangalore and other cities before going in for another European hub.

For AI, European hub is not the only thing that’s on the backburner. Thanks to falling high fares of domestic carriers, passengers have started going back to other modes of transports and aviation growth is negative now. As a result, the merged AI-IA entity, National Aviation Company of India Ltd (NACIL), is now not going to start a domestic low cost carrier service.

Two Indian biggies that fly abroad—Jet and Kingfisher— have JetLite and Kingfisher Red (erstwhile Deccan) in their fold and offer low cost domestic flights. But AI is now not going to join that club.

“We are instead trying to increase domestic segments of our international LCC, AI Express. At this point, there’s no point of having another domestic LCC capacity when the existing ones are finding it hard to fill seats and stay afloat,” said official.

Air Asia to launch KL-Trichy-KL daily from Nov. 1

Air Asia, an international low cost carrier, will enter the Indian market with its first service to the country on the Kuala Lumpur-Tiruchi-Kuala Lumpur sector, scheduled for launch from November 1.

The airline had obtained the security clearance from Bureau of Civil Aviation Security and is awaiting clearance from the Directorate General of Civil Aviation for commencing operations.

A two-member team from the airline, led by Ahmad Ismail, Manager, Standards and New Stations, Air Asia, visited the airport on Thursday for finalisation of the operational and logistical details. They held separate discussions with S. Sreekumar, Airport Director, and T. H. Radhakrishnan, Station Manager, Air India, which will be the ground handling agency.

Speaking to The Hindu after inspecting the facilities at the new terminal building under construction at the airport, Mr. Ismail said the flights on the Kuala Lumpur-Tiruchi-Kuala Lumpur sector would be a daily service. The airline would deploy an all-economy class Airbus 320, with a passenger capacity of 180, on the route. The flight from Kuala Lumpur would arrive here at 8.55 a.m. and depart at 9.25 a.m. (Airports Authority of India officials at the Tiruchi Airport have already cleared the schedule, sources said).

Mr. Ismail said the airline would look to connecting more Indian destinations after the launch of the Tiruchi service. Tiruchi, he said, offered a good potential and the airline would seek to tap the central and south Tamil Nadu market. Meanwhile, airport sources said the state-of-the-art new terminal building, being built at an investment of Rs.70 crore, would become operational by the end of this financial year. Airport sources said Silk Air has also evinced interest in launching services in the Tiruchi-Singapore sector.

Island Aviation starts Male-Trivandrum

The new aircraft brought for “Maldivian” on the 18th of this month has commenced flights to India’s Trivandrum yesterday.

Assistant Director of Island Aviation Services Ismail Sujau said that this 50 seat aircraft will start flights to other destinations even thought it started flights to Trivandrum now.

“We are first starting the flights of this aircraft to India’s Trivandrum. Two flights will be conducted to Trivandrum from 27th of this month onwards. Although this aircraft conducts flights to Trivandrum, it would also travel to Kaadedhdhoo and Gan also” Sujau said.

The ferry flight took off from Cairns- Australia on 11th September 2008 and it was flown to Darwin in Australia followed by Bali-Indonesia, Singapore, Port Blair-India, Colombo-Sri Lanka and finally to Male’. With the arrival of this aircraft, Island Aviation will have 05 aircraft comprising of 01 Dornier 228 aircraft and 04 Dash-8 aircraft.

This aircraft has been painted with the new livery, “Maldivian”, which is the brand name for the company’s airline division.

Island Aviation operates domestic flights to all 04 regional airports in the Maldives and regionally to Trivandrum, India. The company intends to commence its operations to Colombo, Sri Lanka in November 2008 and start online reservation.

Kingfisher, SIA battle it for Singapore market

For decades, more than 70 per cent of the business and first-class passenger market between India and Singapore has been controlled by Singapore International Airlines (SIA).

But homegrown Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines is all set to challenge that with daily flights to the island city starting September 18 from Mumbai, a move that has prompted SIA to respond by adding more India-Singapore flights and increasing discounts.

Kingfisher is wooing SIA’s high-margin business and first-class passengers by deploying the state-of-the-art Airbus A330 and offering premium services.

“We are positioning ourselves as a premium Indian carrier with a ‘wow’ product on the route,” said Rajesh Verma, executive vice-president, Kingfisher Airlines.

“We are aware that there are established carriers like Singapore Airlines flying for years and they have deep pockets too. But we will get loads because we will offer a competitive product at competitive pricing,” he added.

The twin configuration A330 will have just 30 seats on Kingfisher First and 187 King Class seats (which are economy seats — Kingfisher does not have a business class).

First-class passengers will also be pampered with a chef on board, professional bar-tender, a jacket ironing facility and a social area with seat massages

SIA is already responding to the challenge by launching five more morning flights a week from Delhi, taking the total to 14 services a week ex Delhi.

“We are also looking at an increase of frequencies to Bangalore but that is slated for later in the year,” said Foo Chai Woo, general manager India, Singapore Airlines.

“Our aspirations will be to operate double daily to Chennai and Bangalore just like Mumbai currently. Looking ahead, we also need to increase flights to other key cities like Hyderabad as the market develops further,” Foo added.

Singapore Airlines executives said the airline is also offering discounts of between 33 and 66 per cent on return economy fares on its new flights. This will lead to some fare wars on the route as Kingfisher also has to fill its economy seats.

Kingfisher, however, says that it does not want to get into a price war but will respond to any challenge.

Travel trade experts point out that for Kingfisher the timing is right as it will launch just as the leisure season picks up. Load factors during the festival season go up 40 per cent between October and December.

Shanghai Airlines to fly Shanghai-Mumbai

Shanghai Airlines will be the new plane on the block to fly direct between Asian economic behemoths Shanghai and Mumbai. Official sources say that the airline which will start plying between the two cities from the 29th of October, will fly twice a week on Wednesdays and Saturdays. In order to boost passenger traffic between the two cities, the airline is planning on introducing an initial offer of RMB3,250 + tax for a round trip. If this is the price offered by Shanghai Airlines, it will be the cheapest return flight from Shanghai-Mumbai.

Sources have also told 2point6billion.com that since one more Chinese airline has been given permission to fly between the two countries, Vijay Mallya’s kingfisher Airlines, which just won the rights to fly internationally will also start flying between the two countries – most probably from Bangalore to Guangzhou. China Eastern and Air India were the initial airlines which were given permission to fly between India and China.

Jet airways which recently launched daily services between Mumbai-Shanghai and San Fransisco canceled flights on Tuesdays and Wednesdays due to low passenger turnout during those days.

Shanghai Airlines plans to leave Shanghai at 16:30, reaching Mumbai at 21:40. From Mumbai the plane will depart at 22:40 and reach Shanghai at 07:10+1. The move is likely to most satisfy Star Alliance members as Shanghai Airlines is a member of the international airline alliance fraternity. Air India is expected to become a member of the Star Alliance fraternity in 2009.