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A SpiceJet Boeing 737-800 jetliner – SG-960 – on a flight between Bengaluru and Guwahati damaged three runway threshold lights as it touched down approximately 1,000 feet short of the normal landing zone on the runway. There were 155 on board, including two pilots and four cabin crew. “The flight was uneventful till approach and [the] aircraft was cleared to land on runway 2.  As per the pilot in command, due to low clouds on short finals, he lost perception of altitude causing [a] high descent rate which led to touchdown on threshold, causing a hard landing,” said a source in the aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA). The aircraft was being flown by the co-pilot at the time of the incident. Both pilots have been de-rostered pending an investigation by the DGCA. Cut marks have been observed on one of the tyres in the main landing gear after the aircraft was safely moved to a parking bay and inspected.

Navy Chief Admiral Karambir Singh on Thursday said the Indian Navy is moving towards procuring a number of key assets including six more submarines, and pitched for a third aircraft carrier even as he asserted that the force is fully ready to deal with any challenge including from China. Admiral Singh also said the COVID-19 pandemic and attempts to change the status quo at India”s northern borders have thrown up challenging situations, adding the Indian Navy aimed to stand steadfast as a “combat ready, credible and cohesive force”, furthering the country”s national and maritime interests. Addressing a press conference on the eve of Navy Day, he said the Navy has put in place a standard operating procedure in the event of any infringement of its maritime domain in the Indian Ocean region by China. Asked about the rapid expansion of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and possible challenges from it for India, the Chief of Naval Staff said the Indian Navy was cognisant of it, and

Alliance Air, a subsidiary of Air India, delayed one of its flights to Delhi from Jaipur by 30 minutes on Saturday as it waited for a team of doctors who were transporting harvested organs donated by a woman to save four lives in the national capital. The retrieved organs, along with a team of doctors and paramedics staff, were to be flown to the national capital, the airline said on Sunday. “The retrieved organs consisted of two lungs, one liver, and one kidney and were urgently needed in Delhi to save four lives. Collaborated efforts of Rajasthan Chief Minister’s Office, State Organ and Tissue Transplant Organisation (SOTTO), Air India, Alliance Air, Central Industrial Security Force, and Jaipur airport authorities for this humanitarian cause helped in saving four lives,” Alliance Air said. Passengers “waited patiently” for the organs to arrive at the airport after the pilots and crew members of the aircraft announced the reason behind the delay,” Alliance Air said.

In a sign of growing closeness between India and the United States amid conflict with China, the Indian Navy has inducted two Predator drones from an American firm on lease for carrying out surveillance in the Indian Ocean Region and which can also be deployed along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. The American-origin drones have been inducted by the Navy under the emergency procurement powers granted by the Defence Ministry in view of the India-China border conflict. “The drones arrived in India in the second week of November and were inducted into flying operations on November 21 at Indian Navy base at INS Rajali,” top government sources told ANI. The drones have already started flying operations and with an endurance capability of being in the air for over 30 hours, they are proving to be a big asset for the maritime force, they said. An American crew from the vendor is also accompanying the equipment and would help the Navy to operate the machines, the sources said. Th

In a sign of growing closeness between India and the United States amid conflict with China, the Indian Navy has inducted two Predator drones from an American firm on lease for carrying out surveillance in the Indian Ocean Region and which can also be deployed along the Line of Actual Control in Eastern Ladakh. The American-origin drones have been inducted by the Navy under the emergency procurement powers granted by the Defence Ministry in view of the India-China border conflict. “The drones arrived in India in the second week of November and were inducted into flying operations on November 21 at Indian Navy base at INS Rajali,” top government sources told ANI. The drones have already started flying operations and with an endurance capability of being in the air for over 30 hours, they are proving to be a big asset for the maritime force, they said. An American crew from the vendor is also accompanying the equipment and would help the Navy to operate the machines, the sources said. Th

International travelers will need to be vaccinated against Covid-19 to fly with Australia’s Qantas, the company has said, the first major airline to suggest that such rules could become common across the industry. Qantas CEO Alan Joyce said late Monday the Australian flag carrier would implement the measure once a coronavirus vaccine was made available to the public. “We are looking at changing our terms and conditions to say for international travellers that we will ask people to have a vaccination before they can get on the aircraft,” he told Channel Nine. “Whether you need that domestically, we will have to see what happens with Covid-19 in the market but certainly, for international visitors coming out (to Australia) and people leaving the country, we think that is a necessity.” Joyce predicted the rule would likely become standard practice around the world as governments and airlines currently consider the introduction of electronic vaccination passports. Another major regional ai

The Delhi High Court has asked Air India to consider paying at least one month’s salary to its pilots, engaged on contractual basis, whose services were suspended in April and later terminated in August, saying that employees cannot be left to hang high and dry. Justice Navin Chawla asked the counsel for national carrier Air India to take instructions on paying one month’s salary to the contractual pilots, who number around 61. The services of these pilots were terminated in August. The court also asked the airline to hear out the grievances of the pilots, who were engaged on contract after they superannuated, and to see whether something, like a “golden handshake”, can be done for them. With the suggestions, the court listed the matter for hearing on December 16. The court was hearing two pleas moved on behalf of the terminated contractual pilots who have sought quashing of the April 2 order suspending their services and the subsequent order of August 7 by which they were all terminat

Vistara, the full-service airline owned by Tata Group and Singapore Airlines, is eyeing direct flights to the United States as the COVID-19 pandemic pushes demand for non-stop travel, a senior executive said on Friday, November 20. While the specific timeframe and aircraft requirements are yet to be finalised, Vistara is studying various scenarios for starting direct flights, Vinod Kannan, chief commercial officer, told Reuters in an interview. By mid-2023, Vistara expects 20 per cent to 30 per cent of its total seat capacity to be deployed on international routes from less than 10 per cent last year. Its fleet is expected to grow to 70 planes from 47 to 48 planes by the end of the current fiscal year, he said.

Adani Group will take over the operations of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport here from midnight, Airports Authority of India (AAI) said on Friday (November 6). The AAI on Friday completed the procedure to hand over the SVPI Airport, Ahmedabad (Gujarat), to the private player. In a tweet, SVPI Airport said the ceremony to hand over the key to the airport will be held at midnight tonight. The official twitter handle of APD (Airport Director) of Ahmedabad Airport also shared photos of AAI and Adani Group officials signing documents. “Airports Authority of India has completed handing over procedure of SVPI Airport to Adani Ahmedabad International Airport Ltd (AAIAL). At midnight tonight, the ceremonial Handing Over of the Key to AAIAL will mark the new chapter for Ahmedabad Airport,” the airport said in the tweet.

Fare bands for domestic flights have been extended and kept unchanged till February 24, 2021, Ministry of Civil Aviation said in a press release. Along with this, the ministry also announced that more flights would be allowed in the coming days based on passenger traffic. Aviation regulator Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) had announced seven fare bands for domestic flights after Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri called for a cap on the domestic airfare. These fare bands came into force with effect from May 21, 2020. The seven fare bands are time-based. The first band has flights that are operated under 40 minutes duration. The rest of the fare bands are applicable on 40-60 minutes, 60-90 minutes, 90-120 minutes, 120-150 minutes, 150-180 minutes, and 180-210 minutes of flight durations. According to the Civil Aviation Ministry, the daily passenger air traffic reached 2.05 lakh on November 1, 2020. When domestic aviation services resumed in May 2020, the airlines we

All airlines are feeling the coronavirus pinch but one that hasn’t flown since April 2019 after collapsing under a pile of debt is the world’s best performing — at least from a share price point of view. Stock in Mumbai-listed Jet Airways India Ltd. has surged almost 150% this year versus a 42% plunge in the 27-member Bloomberg World Airlines Index, which comprises the globe’s biggest carriers. Its runaway gains have market watchers scratching their heads, especially since Jet Airways is undergoing bankruptcy proceedings, has almost 17,000 creditors seeking claims of around $3.4 billion and has had most of its landing slots confiscated. It doesn’t have any employees to speak of, either. A panel of creditors did approve a resolution plan last month, bringing the recovery of any dues one step closer, but that doesn’t guarantee a resumption of flights. Retail investors are the last ones to get anything out of a bankruptcy, yet some are buying in the hope Jet Airways will successfully emer

General Motors has hired away Delta Airlines’ CFO to fill the automaker’s top financial job. The Detroit-based company said on Friday that Paul Jacobson will start the new position on December 1. The 48-year-old Jacobson has been the airline’s CFO for the past eight years. He’ll replace Dhivya Suryadevara, who left GM in August for Silicon Valley payments startup Stripe. GM said that Jacobson joined Delta as a financial analyst in 1997 and also served as senior vice president and treasurer. Delta is widely viewed by Wall Street as the best-run US airline, and was the most profitable carrier for the past decade.

Qatar said on Friday that those responsible for the invasive gynaecological searches of women passengers at Doha airport had been referred for prosecution over the “violations”. Women on 10 flights out of Doha were subject to the examinations as authorities searched for the mother of a newborn baby found abandoned in an airport bathroom on October 2. “Those responsible for these violations and illegal actions have been referred to the Public Prosecution Office,” the Government Communications Office said in a statement. “The Prime Minister and Minister of Interior expressed the Government of the State of Qatar’s sincerest apology for what some female travelers went through as a result of the measures. New Zealand said late Thursday that one of its citizens was among the women subjected to the invasive examinations, labelling the action “completely unacceptable”.

Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday said bidding for Air India would be done on the basis of its enterprise value instead of equity value. Enterprise value of a company includes the equity value, debt as well as cash with the company. Equity value measures the value of a company’s shares. “We have decided to ask for bids for Air India on enterprise value,” Mr Puri said at a press conference. Aviation Secretary Pradeep Singh Kharola said at the conference, “The bid will be on the enterprise value… In this enterprise value also, a ratio has been earmarked between how much he (bidder) can take as debt and how much he has to give as cash.”

Nearly 200 airports in Europe will face insolvency in the coming months if passenger traffic does not start recovering by the end of the year, airports body ACI Europe said on Tuesday. An estimated 193 European hubs are considered “at-risk airports”, ACI said, adding that they contribute to economic activity that creates 277,000 jobs and 12.4 billion euros ($14.66 billion) of European GDP. Airports at risk are mainly smaller regional ones with fewer than 5 million travellers each year, where closure would have an outsized impact on local jobs, an ACI spokeswoman told Reuters. Larger European airports are also burning through cash at an unsustainable rate, with the top 20 European airports having added 16 billion euros ($18.91 billion) of debt — equivalent to nearly 60% of their revenues in a normal year, ACI said. “The figures published today paint a dramatically bleak picture. Eight months into the crisis, all of Europe’s airports are burning through cash to remain open, with revenues

Overseas Citizen of India (OCI) card holders and foreign nationals can visit India for any purpose, except on tourist visa, the government said today as it eased visa and travel restrictions imposed amid the coronavirus pandemic. In a big move to get air travel back on track, the government has restored the validity of all existing visas, nearly eight months after they were suspended in the wake of the virus crisis and the nationwide lockdown. “The government has decided to make a graded relaxation in visa and travel restrictions for more categories of foreign nationals and Indian nationals who wish to enter or leave India,” an order from the Union Home Ministry says. Under this graded relaxation, the government has decided to restore with immediate effect all existing visas, except electronic visa, tourist visa and medical visa, the statement said. The permission for Overseas Citizens of India and foreign nationals to enter the country includes authorised air or water routes, includin

Airlines face a long, hard winter after a much hoped-for rebound from the coronavirus crisis failed to materialise, prompting savage cost cutting programmes and fresh calls for government support. “We are in a race against time. The key thing is to have the cash… we need to move quickly, very quickly,” said Stephane Albernhe, managing partner at Archery Strategy Consulting. Airline revenues plunged 80 per cent in the first six months of the year, according to industry body IATA, but they still had fixed costs to cover — crew, maintenance, fuel, airport levies and now aircraft storage. After a slight recovery in July as coronavirus restrictions were eased, traffic fell again in September while bookings for the winter season — which begins October 25 — are down 78 per cent compared with a year earlier, promising more hardship to come. One of the biggest disappointments has been the absence of highly lucrative business class travellers who prefer now to rely on tele-conferencing rather th

Creditors to Jet Airways have approved a resolution plan which will give country’s oldest private carrier a new lease of life, the airline said in a regulatory filing on Saturday. The resolution plan submitted by a consortium of London-based Kalrock Capital and UAE-based businessmen Murari Lal Jalan was approved on Saturday, the filing said, while not revealing other details of the deal. In April 2019, Jet Airways – which operated a fleet of more than 120 planes serving dozens of domestic destinations and international hubs such as Singapore, London and Dubai – was forced to ground all flights, crippled by mounting losses as it attempted to compete with low-cost rivals. Since then the airline and its lenders had been looking for suitors. The airline’s financial and operational creditors were owed nearly ₹ 30,000 crore ($4.1 billion) after the operations were halted.

Five people were killed after a tourist plane and a microlight aircraft collided in western France on Saturday, the local government said. The small microlight carrying two people collided with a DA40 tourist plane with three people onboard around 4:30pm (1430 GMT) in Loches in the Indre-et-Loire department, local government official Nadia Seghier told AFP. “(The microlight) landed on the fence around a house without harming anyone else, (the DA40) several hundred metres away in an uninhabited area,” Seghier said. “All five people involved died.” Around 50 firefighters were called out while 30 gendarmes set up road detours around the crash sites. “Air emergency staff from Lyon were brought in at first to track down the plane, which was quickly found,” the prefecture said.

India successfully test-fired the “Rudram” Anti-Radiation Missile, developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), from a Sukhoi-30 fighter aircraft off the east coast today. Defence Minister Rajnath Singh took to Twitter to congratulate DRDO and other stakeholders for the test’s success. “The New Generation Anti-Radiation Missile (Rudram-1) which is India’s first indigenous anti-radiation missile developed by DRDO for Indian Air Force was tested successfully today at ITR, Balasore. Congratulations to DRDO and other stakeholders for this remarkable achievement,” the Defence Minister tweeted.