GO Air has announces special flights to GOA in order to tap the growing rush of passengers from Metro like Delhi,Mumbai , Kolkatta and Chennai.The flights will be introduced in December 18th and will ply till 5th of January 2015.The airline has recently announced tickets starting from Rs 603 and has an offer where every 25th passenger gets a chance to win a free ticket.
Category / Aviation
NASA no longer interested in International Space Station
Nasa will end the ISS mission soon and would move to he cislunar space — the area of space surrounding the moon — for an ambitious human exploration programme.According to Willian Gerstenmaier , NASA’s chief of human flight “We are going to get out of ISS as quickly as we can. Whether it gets filled in by the private sector or not, NASA’s vision is we’re trying to move out”.
The company plans to make the international obervaory inactive by 2024 , 2028 at the latest. The budget of the programe to phase our the ship has also been increase from 3 to 4 billion dollar.
“NASA cannot afford both a robust space station programme and active human exploration programme in cislunar space,” Gerstenmaier was quoted in an interview to ANI.
Air Fare became cheaper this year : Reports.
According to a report by International Air Transport Association , the airfare has reduced this year which has lead to an increase in the number of people taking skies for holiday’s or other reason. Average return fares have reduced by 5 % worldwide as compared to airfare in the same period last year . This has lead to a increase in 3 % rise in the passenger traffic in the recorded period.
According to Tony Tyler, Director General IATA “In most parts of the world we see strong demand for travel exceeding the growth in capacity, Load factors (the number of seats filled) are averaging over 80 per cent and consumers are the big winners with fares trending downwards.”
Meanwhile the average fares have not decreased as the dollar value remained string due to a dip in oil prices. The increase in passenger traffic could have been more but weak traveler sentiment due to attacks by ISIS had lead to a marginal increase. It will be interesting to see for how long the trend sustains
Chennai airport to resume its services on 6th of December 2015.
After suffering from worst rain and flood situation in 100 years Chennai Airport is set to resume its services on Sunday 6th of December 2015. The airport was closed on Wednesday night due to heavy rain and water lodged runway.
“The DGCA has termed it fit and day-time operations will begin from tomorrow morning. We are working resume night-time operations too in a couple of days,” a senior civil aviation ministry official told ET. As per the standard procedure a notice to airmen or NOTA has been issued.
The Airport is ready as the water has been drained but the flight equipments need to checked before the start of operation.
Air India to ground 2 Boeing- 747 despite of $4.5 billion bailout.
State owned aviation company Air India was forced to ground two 747 dreamliner aircrafts despite of a $4.5 billion bailout from the government. The planes were grounded because of lack of spare parts and was not able to cover the repair cost of these aircrafts. In a statement given to the Indian parliament , Junior Aviation Minister Mahesh Sharma said that due to financial crunch the engineering department was not able to buy relevant parts from Japan and was paying an additional parking of $1 million every month for past 10 months.
The carrier has been in losses from the day it was merged from Domestic Carrier Indian Airlines. It amounts to 35% of the total market share and is facing stiff competition from other carriers like Jet Airways and Indigo Airlines.
Jeddah’s New Airport to open in Mid- 2017.
KING ABDULAZIZ INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT , Middle East’s most talked about airport is set to open in mid of year 2017. According to reports , first phase or the 80% of the work has been completed and the airport will be ready for operation by 2017. The new airport can handle 30 million passengers at a single time. It will be one of its kind airport with 720,000sqm terminal will have 46 gates to handle the growing rush of air passengers in the region.
The Airport will have five business lounges and 28000 sqm of retail , f/b space. The airport will also have a mosque which will be able to hold 3000 worshipper. Among other features the airport will have a 120 room four star hotel , a railway station and parking facilities to hold upto 2,36,000 cars.
The second phase of the development will raise the capacity to 55 million passengers while the final phase can accommodate more than 80 million passengers.
Boeing readies dreamliner 787-10 design.
Boeing is ready with the new design of dreamliner 787 -10. The company achieved the target two years ahead of the schedule and the requirement for fabrication has been raised. This will be a major achievement for the company’s most selling aircraft. The company plans to launch the new aircraft by 2017 and plans deliveries by 2018.
With the 787-10, we are building upon our experience and the 787-9 design itself to create this newest member of the super-efficient 787 family,” said Ken Sanger, vice president of 787 Airplane Development .Through our dedicated team and our disciplined processes, we have optimized the design for the needs of the market and are excited as we look forward to production.”
The new model will be an extension of the existing Boeing 787-9 design and plans to improve the efficiency and reduce the operational cost and risk for its production. The new design will be 95% similar to the existing one except for changes in the manufacturing process implemented by the company. The new aircraft would be able to travel 6,430 nautical miles (11,910 km) and will be 25% more efficient from the existing models.
Jet Airways allowed to use Turbo Pop Engines.
Jet Airways has received approval from Directorate General of Civil Aviation for CAT II authorisation of its ATR 72 – 500/600 fleet for low visibility operations. The airline is first in India to receive such a approval for CAT – II operation of turbo pop aircrafts. This would allow turbo pop aircrafts to take off on runways with visibility as low as 125 meters and land on runways with 300 meters . In a statement issued by Nikhil Ved , Senior Vice President flight operation the approval would allow the company to enhance its operations in the winter season in India.
Jet Airways currently flies to 35 destination with turbo pop powered aircrafts and the same is used to connect Metro cities with Tier II and III cities of the country . It would also reduce the number of flights canceled due to fog situations.
Indigo to get new Airbus Neo.
Indigo today confirmed that it would receive its first Airbus Neo aircraft from Airbus by end of December and would increase its fleet strength to 143 within next 15 months. Indigo finalized the purchase of 250 Airbus Neo aircrafts for USD 26.5 billion in August this year. According to its president Aditya Ghosh “The Airbus A320 Neos will start coming in from December- end. In the next 14-15 months itself we will see a huge expansion. We are going to grow from about 98 to 134 airplanes.”
With the newly acquired fleet Indigo is also planning to start more international flights from Kolkata. According to Ghosh “Sometime in the summer, we are planning a direct flight to Dhaka and another to Singapore and Bangkok. When we bought the first 100 planes everybody asked where you are going to park the planes. Today we are not only parking planes but flying close to 100 aircraft. The market is growing at 21 per cent year on year for the past several quarters and there is not enough capacity coming in. So, there is a huge opportunity. I do not see infrastructure is an issue. We have a robust cadet pilot program. We generate 25 new junior first officers every month. We create 15 new captains every month. Some of our first junior officers have started becoming captains. We have just moved into a brand new learning facility.”
The airline got listed last month and it will be interesting to see how the company plans to scale up its infrastructure and operations.
Emirates aims a bounty from India.
Gulf carrier Emirates is eyeing the great India travel by flying more than 85 million travelers by 2020. India is slated to be the Third largest aviation market by 2020 and Emirates want to earn the major share of traffic from here . According to Vice Chairman of the Company Essa Sulaiman Ahmad ” In the next five years, we are looking for 67 per cent growth in the number of passengers flying to and from India. We are looking for a greater chunk in the segment we operate in. We are looking for more investments in building our products to achieve the goal (of ferrying 85 million passengers).” He was speaking at a conference for Emirates contribution to Indian Economy and beyond.
Emirates has become one of the aviation giant in recent times with its gateway from Dubai. It connects to 140 destination globally from the Emirate capital and is slated to be a Aviation power house soon.
“Since the start of our operations in 1985, we have grown steadily and kept the momentum. For the next phase of growth we have kept similar plans to reach more and more people. We are happy that the government called us for participation. We have assigned specific teams for that and they will give necessary comments to the government in due time.”
Vaibhav Attree 