Air India, Jet flights escape disaster at Mumbai airport

An aviation disaster was averted at Mumbai airport Sunday when two aircraft got clearance to take off simultaneously from two runways but the pilots stopped the planes in the nick of time, an airport official said.

The incident occurred at 7.27 a.m. when Air India’s Mumbai-Delhi and Jet Airways’ Mumbai-Kolkata flight were scheduled for departure.

While the Air India aircraft with 119 passengers was awaiting take-off on the main runway 927, the Jet plane with 120 passengers awaited at the cross-runway 1427, the official said.

After clearance from the Air Traffic Control (ATS), both aircraft started moving and came almost opposite each other before their pilots aborted the take off.

This is the second major instance of a near-collision at Mumbai airport in the past four months.

On Feb 9, a near-collision between a helicopter in the president’s air entourage and an Air India flight was averted.

Mumbai airport, among the busiest in the world, has two runways running across each other (in X formation). While the main runway is used round-the-clock, the cross-runway (1427) is used for six hours daily.

There is generally a few minutes gap between every take off. The runways are alternatively used for take-off and landing.

The ATC is now actively considering a proposal to use the cross-runway round-the-clock to ease air congestion over Mumbai.

Air India Entry To Star Delayed Until 2010

Air India is now expected to join the Star Alliance in the first quarter of 2010, one year later than its scheduled plan for entry in March 2009. 

While Star Alliance and Air India signed a non-disclosure agreement last year, the compliance is yet to be done. According to an airline official, the basic coordination between Air India and erstwhile Indian Airlines (now under the Air India banner) is proving to be a harrowing experience as “it is not clear who has to do what.” 

The two airlines (Air India and Indian Airlines) have yet to integrate their different IT platforms under one common system. Also, AI has not yet confirmed to Star its decision on which IT platform it will be using.

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.

AI to resume flights to Yangon

Air India has announced that it will resume operations to Yangon from the first week of October. The flights had been suspended from May owing to bad weather and scarcity of passengers.  The services will be reinstated from October 3. Two flights will operate every week, one on Monday and another on Friday.

Air India will also reintroduce its service to Bagdogra five days a week with effect from September 1.

Air traffic In India drops sharply

Airlines, triggered by increasing fares, reported lower passenger loads for the second consecutive month. Despite significant capacity reduction, airlines have also been hit by lower loads. Domestic airlines managed to carry only 3.04-million passengers in July, down 12.64 per cent, in comparison to 3.48 million during the same month of the previous year.

Low-cost carriers such as Air Deccan and SpiceJet were the worst hit, with their load factor falling significantly. Air India also saw its loads falling and market share dipping. Passenger traffic in the domestic segment declined 4% in June 2008, suffering negative growth for the first time in years. The slide has ended an unprecedented growth phase, which lasted for years and witnessed 40 per cent buoyancy during certain quarters. While LCCs fared poorly, Naresh Goyal-owned Jet Airways and Vijay Mallya-promoted Kingfisher Airlines maintained their position.

According to data, the load factor of almost all the airlines declined. The largest budget airline of the country, Air Deccan, registered only 49.2 per cent load factor in July as compared to 67.7 per cent in the same month last year. Its market share declined 11.3 per cent in July from 16.1 per cent. SpiceJet’s seat factor declined to 57.8 per cent in July 2008 from 71.4 per cent in the corresponding month last year.

Delta to begin Mumbai-Atlanta from November 1

Delta Air Lines on Friday announced a new non-stop daily flight between Mumbai to Atlanta in the US from November 1. The new flight will replace Delta’s current non-stop flight from Mumbai to New York’s JFK. 

This flight will offer Mumbai’s community the benefit of connections across the US, the Caribbean and Latin America via Delta’s Atlanta hub, the release said. The Delta flight DL 185 will leave Mumbai at 1.05 am and reach Atlanta at 8.30 am while the flight DL 184 will depart Atlanta at 7.15 pm and arrive in Mumbai at 10.35 pm (next day), the release said. It would be a 17-hour, 55-minute non-stop west-bound flight.

I personally think that Delta is not able to sustain lodas on its BOM-JFK sector as there are 4 players in tis field and competition is cut throat. Yields on the BOM-NYC route will rise and will benefit Air India, Jet Airways and Continental.

Air India to cut flights on international routes

In a move to curtail incrasing losses, Air India plans to withdraw some flights on international sectors. A decision was taken in a board meeting held in Mumbai on Sunday. The company has already reduced capacity in the domestic market by 15%. Air India has also resorted to reducing air fare on international routes ranging from 5% to 20% to improve its load.

“We are planning to cut some flights on international routes to contain losses. The final decision on the number of sectors where we would withdraw operation would be taken shortly,” an Air India official said. According to industry sources, Air India would soon withdraw its services on Delhi-Los Angeles sector. Some of the flights on India-Africa sector would also be pulled out. The Delhi-Los Angeles service was launched in June 2004. Air India operates three flights a week to Los Angeles.