National air-carrier Air India would offer freebies such as free-tickets, holiday packages, air-conditioners and microwaves to its
agents, who give the airline good sales using global reservation system, Galileo.
“Close on the heels of the recent major fare reduction and ‘Spouse Plus’ scheme for the passengers, Air India is now offering attractive incentives for its approved travel agents,” a company press release said today.
The state-owned carrier Air India has cut fares by up to 82% in 20 sectors on Tuesday, mostly on metro routes, following a dip in aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices. ”The airline is cutting basic fares by 35-82% on domestic sectors,” said a spokesperson of National Aviation Corporation of India (Nacil), which controls Air India.
Jet Airways’ subsidiary, JetLite, too reduced basic fares on all its domestic flights with immediate effect. These fares will now be lower by up to 40%, Jet Airways said in a statement on Tuesday. A Mumbai-Delhi economy class basic fare will now be available for as low as Rs 750; the Mumbai-Chennai basic fare is at Rs 595; Ahmedabad-Goa is at Rs 245, while the Delhi-Hyderabad fare at Rs 999, without taxes.
On Sunday, Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya promised to slash fares from January 1. While he did not mention the exact percentage, experts believe it could be in the 10-15% range, which means fares could drop by Rs 500 to Rs 1,000. Jet Airways had already cut its basic fares by 15-40% with effect from Monday.
Travel agents in the country have had their way with airlines, at least in the domestic sector. National carrier Air India today agreed to pay a 3 per cent commission to travel agents, nearly two weeks after Jet Airways and Kingfisher agreed to do the same.
Like Jet and Kingfisher, AI too will pay the commission on the total fare including fuel surcharge and basic fare, instead of 5 per cent on the basic fare, which it used to pay earlier.
The three full-service carriers had stopped paying the agents commission since November 1.
This is a significant move since Air India accounts for the single largest chunk of agents’ revenues.
State-owned carrier Air India Head Raghu Menon was censured on Wednesday by the government for his proposal to offer leave without pay
to 15,000 employees.
Highly placed sources said Oil Minister Murli Deora took exception to Menon’s proposals during a meeting of the Federation of Indian Airlines and Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel to resolve the crisis arising out of mounting fuel bill arrears.
Deora cut Menon short when he today again talked of the need to "rationalise" the workforce to trim losses arising out of negative growth and high fuel cost. "There should not be any layoffs. Why are you raising it now," sources quoted Deora as telling Menon.
The oil minister than widened his message on ‘no-job’ cuts to the other participants-Kingfisher Chairman Vijay Mallya and Jet Airways Executive Director Saroj Dutta- present at the meeting.
In a surprise move ensured to delay its air cargo plans for quite a while, Indian flag carrier Air India has decided to exit the cargo space and lease out its freighters. This, even though, cargo is a big revenue earner.
According to reports, Air India is seeking to lease two of its Airbus 310s, which were converted to freighters. The carrier is also converting six Boeing 737-200s into freighters, each with a payload capacity of 12 to 15 tonnes, which will bring its freighter fleet strength to eight.
Aviation service provider Air India has chalked out a major initiative to increase its operational efficiency to overcome the “alarming situation” arising out of the unprecedented increase in the price of fuel in recent months.
Air India had recently invited the international airport transport association’s green team to undertake a fuel efficiency gap analysis (FEGA) of the airline’s operations, related to emissions reduction and fuel efficiency, where it was predicted to have potential to save USD 198 million per year for the airline, if certain changes were introduced.
Mounting losses have forced Air India to push for drastic pay cuts. The public sector company is planning to reduce the productivity-linked incentives (PLI) of its 34,000-strong workforce. The move is significant since PLI constitutes a significant portion of Air India employees’ salaries, up to 50% in some cases.
The airline is also working on plans to send employees on leave without pay for periods ranging up to five years. The aim of these measures is to save on costs and check losses.
The National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL), would soon invite global bids for leasing out two of its A310-300 freighters, a senior NACIL official said.
“We will soon put out a Request for Proposal (RFP) to lease out two of our A310-300 cargo aircraft,” the official told media here on Thursday. NACIL is the holding company of national air-carrier Air India.
As the festive season draws near, 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 Corporate Communications Manager Sameek Bhattacharya said. On Mondays, the flight will reach Yangon directly and on Fridays it will take a route via Gaya. “Air India will also operate an additional flight on September 29 on the Kolkata-Yangon-Kolkata sector keeping in mind the rush of pilgrims during this time of the year,” Bhattacharya said.
India’s national carrier Air India will launch two additional flights to Saudi Arabia from Sep 7 ahead of the festivals of Onam and Eid-ul-Fitr.
These daily flights will operate between Riyadh and Kozhikode; and Dammam and Kochi, according to the carrier’s Jeddah-based regional manager Deepak Anand.
"These flights have been worked out in a manner that will facilitate easy travel for both inbound and outbound journeys," Anand told the Arab News newspaper.
In a bid to check mounting losses, Air India has undertaken a major route rationalisation programme that will see the airline withdrawing flights to Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur and restructuring operations to New York, Toronto, Bangkok and Dhaka.
Forced by high losses due to rising fuel prices and low yields, Air India is adopting business strategies to face not only global competition but also from private Indian competitor Jet Airways.
Due to the unprecedented rise in jet fuel prices, Air India is expected to suffer a net loss of about Rs 2,000 crore in 2007-08 as per revised estimates, official sources said, adding that there would be no respite in 2008-09 which would be another difficult year for the national carrier.
India’s flag carrier, Air India, has decided to put brakes on foreign tours of its staff unless it is “absolutely essential”.
In a circular, the carrier, grappling with high aviation turbine fuel (ATF) prices and low passenger growth, said those who want to take a foreign trip should seek permission of the chairman and managing director.
“Foreign tours should be undertaken only for absolutely essential purposes. All foreign tours henceforth should be scrutinised at the functional director level and recommended to the chairman only in respect of critical cases,” an Air India circular signed by Chairman and Managing Director, Raghu Menon, said.
With losses mounting to Rs 2,100-crore and ATF prices on the rise, the national carrier has been forced to resort to cost-cutting measures to boost its sagging bottom line.
National air-carrier, Air India, has announced a special offer aimed at the students travelling to the West, Far-East and South-East Asian countries on its flights.
Under the offer, a student with a valid visa, can avail additional free baggage allowance, ranging between 10-40 kilograms, an official release said here on Wednesday.
Students travelling to Frankfurt, Birmingham, Paris and London or via Frankfurt/London/Paris to the interiors of UK/Europe can avail free baggage allowance of 20 kg in addition to the 20 kg, allowed on the ticket, the release said.
US aerospace giant, Boeing Co, has said that flag carrier, Air India would be “duly compensated” for delays in the delivery of the 787 Dreamliner.
“Every contract that we sign has a clause which deals with what happens in case of such eventuality. Accordingly, Air India would be compensated as per the contract signed,” senior vice-president (sales) Boeing Commercial Airplane’s Dinesh Keskar said.
He expressed his happiness at the number of orders that the company had received from India, which currently stood at 164. In this regard he said that India’s largest private carrier, Jet Airways, might just “rework” its order depending on how it worked out its future plans.
National carrier Air India is preparing a blueprint to save over Rs 1000 crore from August this year by cutting down its total capacity by around 10-12 per cent.
The civil aviation ministry is preparing a formal proposal for the government to put in more equity and provide loan assistance. The proposal would be ready this fortnight.
“The cuts in capacity will be implemented from the next month itself. Air India will save around Rs 500-600 crore in the remaining months of this financial year,” said a senior civil aviation ministry official.
There’s turbulence in the air. Two of India’s largest airlines, Air India and Jet Airways, have sounded caution on their fiscal health due to mounting operational costs.
A daily operational loss of $2 million (Rs 8.6 crore) has in fact forced Jet Airways to put its employees on alert.
Jet’s senior general manager (MIS & investor relations), KG Vishwanath, has shot off a letter to its senior executives on the current state of affairs, “The current situation is very grave in terms of the magnitude of losses that we have been incurring. We are very concerned, so is the chairman (Naresh Goyal). Our current losses are $2 million a day (including JetLite). The current run rate of Jet Airways’ domestic losses is $0.5 million (Rs 2.15 crore) and of JetLite is another $0.5 million. Our international business is losing over $1 million (Rs 4.30 crore) a day.”
Click for complete article
Air India Express, the low-cost subsidiary of Indian Airlines catering mainly to middle east countries, has cancelled its operations from UAE to Goa, a week after opening its seat bookings for the Indian state.
The budget airline was scheduled to operate its flights to Goa from June 18 thrice a week, to cater to the nearly 500,000 Goans who live in the UAE.
The airline, however said the people who had booked their tickets will either get a complete refund or will be provided alternative arrangements, a gulf daily reported.
Faced with a massive human resource crunch, merged carrier Air India would be pleased about the induction of 44 new pilots into its ranks. Trained at its own academy, the fresh inductees increase the number of pilots in the flag carrier’s ranks to 1,244.
Air India spokesman, Jitendra Bhargava, said, ”The induction of these new pilots in the airline will create a new line of co-pilots and these pilots after successfully flying for 2,000 hours would be eligible for commanding an aircraft. Simultaneously we will also train fresh pilots and have a batch of fresh co-pilots ready.”
The Air India will launch its much-awaited cargo services within the country from July 1 and will connect six major important destinations, a top official said.
The Air India has completed converting its four-737 boeing aircraft which will be pressed into service from July 1 from Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, Air India Airport Director I J K Dhas said.
National air-carrier, Air India, is contemplating a slew of cost-cutting measures aimed at overcoming mounting losses due to high operating costs.
Several austerity measures are believed to have been discussed by the management in a recently-held Board meeting with a view to cutting losses, now exuberated by surging international crude prices.
Belt-tightening measures believed to have been discussed include a 25 per cent cut in wages and variable productivity link incentives (PLI), a 25 per cent cut in fuel reimbursement, driver salary and car maintenance, discontinuation of clothing allowance and a 25 per cent cut in the sales promotion budget.
