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Air India’s longest direct flight from San Francisco to Bengaluru with an all-woman cockpit crew successfully landed in the southern city on Monday. The national carrier had said on Saturday that this flight would be the longest commercial flight in the world to be operated by any Indian airline and the total flight time on this route would be of more than 17 hours depending on the wind speed on that day. The direct distance between the two cities at opposite ends of the world is 13,993 km with a time zone change of around 13.5 hours. “In a moment to cherish and celebrate, women professionals of Indian civil aviation create history,” Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri said on Twitter. “Heartiest Congratulations to Capt Zoya Aggarwal, Capt Papagari Thanmai, Capt Akansha Sonaware & Capt Shivani for flying over North Pole to land in Bengaluru from San Francisco, he stated. Flight AI176 departed from San Francisco in the USA at around 8.30 pm (local time) on Saturday and landed

Qatar Airways and Saudi Airlines will resume flights between Doha and Riyadh from Monday in a reopening of airspace as part of a political rapprochement in a three-year-old dispute. Qatar Airways said via Twitter on Saturday it will resume flights to Riyadh on Monday, Jeddah from January 14, and Dammam from January 16. It said the flights would be with wide-body planes including the Boeing 777-300, Boeing 787-8 and Airbus A350. “We also look forward to resuming a strong relationship with our trade and cargo partners in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, as well as the major airports in the country,” the airline added on Twitter. Saudi Airlines (Saudia) also tweeted that it too would resume flights from Riyadh and Jeddah to Doha from Monday. Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Egypt imposed a diplomatic, trade and travel embargo on Qatar in mid-2017 accusing it of supporting terrorism. Qatar denied that and said the embargo was meant to undermine its sovereignty.

An Indonesian Sriwijaya Air plane is feared to have crashed into the sea after the Boeing 737 lost contact with air traffic control in the capital Jakarta, with flight tracking data showing the jet plunged into a steep dive just four minutes after take-off. It was unclear how many passengers and crew were aboard the Boeing 737-500, which has a capacity of about 130, when it left Jakarta’s Soekarno-Hatta international airport Saturday afternoon. The usual flight time is about 90 minutes over the Java Sea between Java island and Kalimantan, Indonesia’s section of Borneo island. Data from FlightRadar24 said the plane reached an altitude of nearly 11,000 feet (3,350 metres) before dropping to 250 feet. It then lost contact with air traffic control. “Sriwijaya Air flight #SJ182 lost more than 10,000 feet of altitude in less than one minute, about 4 minutes after departure from Jakarta,” the tracking agency said on its official Twitter account. Broadcaster Kompas TV quoted local fishermen as

US prosecutors hit Boeing with a $2.5 billion fine to settle charges the company defrauded regulators over the 737 MAX, the Justice Department announced Thursday. Boeing reached a deferred prosecution agreement related to the company’s pronouncements to regulators about the issues with the MAX, which was grounded for 20 months after two deadly crashes and only recently was cleared to return to the skies. Prosecutors described Boeing’s failings in withering terms, accusing the company of putting “profit over candor” and of engaging in a “half-truths” and a “cover up.” The DOJ charged Boeing with concealing information about the Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS), an anti-stall system that was a prime factor in crashes of Lion Air and Ethiopian Airlines flights that together claimed 346 lives. Boeing, through two MAX pilots, concealed key information about MCAS to the Federal Aviation Administration, DOJ said. This omission meant the FAA did not mention MCAS in its fi

A new breakthrough could help reduced the carbon footprint of air travel, with the aim to bring emissions by jets to net zero. A team of researchers from Oxford University has successfully managed to turn carbon dioxide (CO2) into jet fuel, though as of now the experiment was performed at a very small scale. As concerns about climate change keep mounting by the day, scientists have been looking into converting CO2 into sustainable, synthetic hydrocarbons fuels for transportation purposes for a few years now. As of now, this reverse engineering has only been experimented in the lab but could be a game-changer when introduced on a larger scale – making air travel carbon neutral. The team of researchers have discovered a way to use low-cost iron catalysts to convert CO2 in the atmosphere (or directly from emissions of factories) into synthetic jet fuel. The scientists first prepare the Fe-Mn-K (iron-manganese-potassium) catalyst by the organic combustion method (OCM). This catalyst then

The COVID-19 pandemic had a massive impact on the Indian aviation sector in 2020 and major airlines facing losses and challenging times laid-off employees, sent them on leave without pay, or cut their salaries. The government also had to extend the deadline for submitting bids for Air India five times during the year. When the pandemic started spreading across the country, all scheduled international flights and domestic passenger flights were suspended from March 23 and March 25, respectively. Scheduled domestic flights were restarted in a limited manner from May 25. The effect of this disruption can be gauged by the loss figures of India’s two largest airlines. IndiGo incurred net losses of ₹ 2,884 crore and ₹ 1,194 crore in Q1 and Q2 of this fiscal respectively. SpiceJet posted net losses of ₹ 600 crore and ₹ 112 crore in Q1 and Q2, respectively. The government, meanwhile, permitted special international passenger flights under Vande Bharat Mission since May and air bubble arrangeme

Two passengers on UK flights who tested positive on arrival in Delhi this week left isolation centres and reached their hometowns in Andhra Pradesh and Punjab. They have been tracked down and admitted in government facilities amid worries about a fast-spreading mutant strain of the coronavirus found in the UK. A 47-year-old woman arrived on Monday and tested positive for Covid in a Rapid Antigen Test at the Delhi airport. Her 22-year-old son tested negative. Passengers on UK flights are being tested at airports across the country to check the spread of a fast-spreading mutant variant of the coronavirus that has emerged in Britain. The woman was taken to the Safdarjung hospital and reportedly advised home isolation as she was asymptomatic. She then travelled with her son from Delhi to Rajahmundry by the AP Special Express, which arrived at midnight yesterday. Railway police and health officials took her straight from the railway station to the hospital. “We have carried out rapid antige

At least 16 people who came to India from the UK in the past few days have tested positive for COVID-19 amid alarm over a mutant strain of the coronavirus that is believed to be more contagious and was first identified in Britain. Eight people who came from or via the UK have tested positive in Amritsar, five in New Delhi, two in Kolkata and one in Chennai, authorities said. There have been no confirmed instances of the mutant strain anywhere in India so far, the government has said. Over the last two days, before the ban on flights from the UK kicked in on Wednesday, all passengers from the country have been subjected to RT-PCR tests for the coronavirus and made to wait at the airports till the results came in. Samples of those who tested positive have been sent to specialised labs like the National Institute of Virology in Pune to determine if the infection is from the mutant coronavirus. Authorities are also tracing every traveller from the UK in the last four weeks and recommending

Airline stocks extended losses for the second consectuve day after the government announced suspension of all flights from the UK to the country until the end of the year following the discovery of a new strain of COVID-19, which is said to be 70 per cent more transmissible than fhe existing virus. India joins a growing list of countries, including Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, that have announced travel to the UK as the world heads into Christmas and New Year holidays. At 11:30 am, SpiceJet was down 8.66 per cent to ₹ 83.50, while InterGlobe Aviation dropped 2.41 per cent to ₹ 1,469.60 and and Jet Airways weakened by 4.9 percent to ₹ 100.85 on the BSE. These stocks have shed more than 16 per cent in the past two days. “This suspension to start from 22nd December 2020. Consequently, flights from India to the UK shall stand temporarily suspended during the above said period,” the Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a statement on Twitter on December 21. Pa

The government today banned flights from the UK till December 31 over a new fast-spreading strain of the coronavirus in that country. The ban will start from Wednesday and all passengers arriving from the UK before then will be tested on arrival at airports. “Considering the prevailing situation in UK, the government of India has decided that all flights originating from UK to India to be suspended till 31st December,” said the aviation ministry after a joint monitoring group on COVID-19 met this morning to discuss the mutant coronavirus that has spread rapidly in the UK, sending cases rocketing within days. Union Health Secretary Rajesh Bhushan said the new variant had an unusually large number of genetic changes and the development “calls for enhanced epidemiological surveillance, enhanced containment” and other measures to effectively tackle the challenge. “India has been seeing a sustained decline in the number of fresh Covid-19 cases for over two months now, accompanied by a decli

Privatisation of Air India may spill into next fiscal year as the divestment process is unlikely to conclude in the remaining a little over three months of 2020-21, an official said. Salt-to-software conglomerate Tata Group and US-based fund Interups Inc were among “multiple” entities that put in preliminary bids last week for buying loss-making carrier Air India. A group of over 200 Air India employees also submitted an expression of interest (EoI) for the carrier in partnership with Interups at the close of the deadline on December 14. The Transaction Advisor will inform the qualified bidders by January 6 following which the bidders will be given access to virtual data room (VDR) of Air India, an official said. The share purchase pact will be shared with the bidders, following which financial bids would be invited, the official added. The transaction will be concluded only in next fiscal as we are expecting bidders to have a lot of queries once they get access to VDR and before they

Union Minister for Civil Aviation Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday informed that more than 3.9 million people were facilitated international travel ever since the Vande Bharat Mission was launched. Taking to Twitter, Mr Puri shared data that showed that on December 18 (Friday) itself 8,546 Indians returned from various locations such as Sharjah, Dubai, London, Toronto, San Francisco, among others. However, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) spokesperson Anurag Srivastava earlier informed that Phase 8 of Vande Bharat Mission has been extended till December 31.

National carrier Air India has directed all its employees, who have submitted an expression of interest (EoI) for participating in the bid for strategic disinvestment of the airline, to refrain from handling policy and other strategic matters. Air India, in an office order dated December 16, also asked the employees who are participating in the consortium for submitting an EOI for participation in the bid for strategic disinvestment to submit a formal intimation of participation by December 21, 2020. “Such employees are directed that they should not handle matters related to policy and other strategic issues of the company which may have a bearing on the disinvestment of Air India or any information which may be used directly or indirectly in this regard. However, such employees may continue to handle the routine day-to-day business of the company,” the office order said. The office order was issued by the airline’s General Manager (Personnel).

Tata Group filed an Expression of Interest for Air India to the Disinvestment Ministry on Monday and will now be expected to submit its financial bid within the next 15 days. This is just an expression of interest and not a financial bid and it has been submitted as the deadline ends today, Tatas told NDTV. An expression of interest indicates a buyer’s interest in acquiring a company. The deadline for filing expression of interest ends at 5 pm. It is still not known whether Tatas plan to acquire Air India with their existing partners, i.e. Air Asia or Vistara, or go solo. The shortlisted bidder will be expected to pick up ₹ 23,286 crores of the ₹ 60,000 crore total debt of the airline. The remaining debt will be transferred by the government into a special purpose vehicle called Air India Assets Holding. The disinvestment of Air India will be based on its enterprise value, i.e. calculation of its market capitalisation, short-term and long-term debt and any cash on its balance sheet. Me

A group of 219 Air India Ltd. employees submitted a bid to purchase 51 per cent of the loss-making state-owned carrier. The remaining 49 per cent will be held by a financial partner, according to Meenakshi Malik, who is Air India’s commercial director. Each employee will have to contribute at least ₹ 1 lakh ($1,360) toward the bid, she said. Air India has been on sale since 2017 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s cabinet signed off on a plan to sell all or part of the debt-ridden carrier. The government sweetened the deal earlier this year when it extended the bid deadline to December 14 from October 30, saying potential suitors will be allowed to decide how much of the flag carrier’s debt they want to take on as part of the transaction. The rules before that required bidders to take over the carrier’s $3.3 billion of aircraft debt, deterring buyers. “We always believed Air India can be a profitable set up,” said Malik. “The government has removed a huge part of the debt, so we though

New Delhi:   In order to recognize individuals and corporates who have made significant impact through their Learning and Development programs, TISS LEAPVAULT Chief Learning Officer (CLO) Awards has announced IndiGo’s learning academy – ifly – a winner across four prestigious categories. IndiGo ifly, has been voted third time in a row with 4 awards including: Gold for our ‘Safety Training Adaptation to the new normal’ Gold for ‘Putting the Customer First’ for AOCS managers and frontline Gold for ‘Customer Service for Restart of our Operations’ Silver for ‘First Aid Program to handle common medical emergencies’ Ms. Summi Sharma, Vice President, ifly, IndiGo said , “It’s an honour to be recognised and awarded for our Learning and Development programmes at ifly. We are thrilled to receive these four awards from TISS LeapVault CLO, the most prestigious and sought-after awards in the area of corporate learning and leadership development in India. At IndiGo we are committed to updating our t

The National Company Law Tribunal (NCLT) on Friday, December 11, adjourned the key hearing on the revival plan for grounded airline carrier Jet Airways. The bankruptcy court has now listed the matter for hearing on December 17 due to paucity of time. Jet Airways, once India’s largest airline by market capitalisation,  plans to restart regular operations as a full-service carrier by the summer of 2021, its new owners said earlier this month. A consortium, led by the Dubai-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan as well as London-based Kalrock Capital on December 7, announced a revival plan for the airline. “The Jet 2.0 program is aimed at reviving the past glory of Jet Airways, with a fresh set of processes and systems to ensure greater efficiency and productivity across all routes,” the consortium said in a statement. Jet Airways halted operations in April 2019 due to bankruptcy amid the weight of heavy debt. The airline plans to operate all its historic domestic slots across the country a

SpaceX’s Starship prototype exploded while attempting to land on Wednesday after an otherwise successful test launch from the company’s rocket facility in Boca Chica, Texas, live video of the flight showed. The Starship rocket destroyed in the accident was a 16-story-tall prototype for the heavy-lift launch vehicle being developed by billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s private space company to carry humans and 100 tons of cargo on future missions to the moon and Mars. The self-guided rocket blew up as it touched down on a landing pad following a controlled descent. The test flight had been intended to reach an altitude of 41,000 feet, propelled by three of SpaceX’s newly developed Raptor engines for the first time. But the company left unclear whether the rocket had flown that high.

In order to conduct the ground survey for preparing the detailed project report (DPR) of the proposed Delhi-Varanasi high-speed rail corridor, light detection and ranging survey (LiDAR) technique using laser enabled equipment mounted on a helicopter will be adopted, said the National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL). The aerial LiDAR survey technique was adopted for the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor due to its high accuracy, which was the very first time when this method was used for any railway project in the country. The data provided through the LiDAR technology can be useful for several projects including surface transport, roads, irrigation, landslides, canals, city planning, etc.

Grounded Jet Airways plans to restart operations as a full service carrier by the summer of 2021, its new owners have said. A consortium, led by the Dubai-based entrepreneur Murari Lal Jalan and Kalrock Capital, on Monday announced a revival plan for the ailing airline, which halted operations in April 2019 due to bankruptcy amid piles of debt. “The Jet 2.0 program is aimed at reviving the past glory of Jet Airways, with a fresh set of processes and systems to ensure greater efficiency and productivity across all routes,” the consortium said in a statement. Once the country’s largest airline by market capitalisation, Jet Airways will operate all its historic domestic slots in the country and also resume international operations once it receives approvals from the regulators and the National Company Law Tribunal, a bankruptcy tribunal. “If everything goes as per plan and the Consortium receives the NCLT and regulatory approvals on time, Jet Airways would be back in the skies by the Summ