Airfares hike once again

Government has decided to put an additional charge for air travelers in Delhi and Mumbai, so stop expecting cheap air tickets from now. ADF charges may be effective from next month onwards; this will be an additional fee for outgoing passengers. The ADF will be for 2 years only to minimize the deficits for future which was about Rs 2,000 crores at the Delhi and Mumbai airports. Delhi Airports will be charging of about Rs 300 from outgoing domestic passengers and Rs 1000 from international passengers as additional flights airfares. These two airports handles 55 percent of flights in India and the reconstruction of the two airports can cost upto Rs 11,400 crores. This ADF will be charged for 2 years then it may be discontinued.

The Bangalore Government allowed it’s airports to charge UDF of Rs 260 from Jan 16. Here domestic passengers are already paying Rs 375 and International passengers have been paying Rs 1000 UDF early this month which is additional to cheap flights tickets. The sources are depicting that airports could be allowed to pay UDF or ADF from passengers but still no official talks have been done in this regards.

Air India launches Two More flights from Gulf to Thiruvananthapuram

Air India had one flight running between Bahrain and Thiruvananthapuram on Tuesday earlier, but from now it is launching two more flights for the same route which will be running on every Friday and Saturday but at the same time, Air India is going to reduce flights running between Bahrain and Kozhikode in Kerala from six days to four days in a week.

The other airlines Indian Airlines was already operating daily from Bahrain to Kochi and Kozhikode. The schedule for the Bahrain-Thiruvananthapuram flight will be it will depart from Bahrain at 12:55 a.m. on Tuesday and reach Thiruvananthapuram at 7:50 a.m. From Bahrain it will take off on Friday and Saturday at 11.20 p.m. and land in Thiruvananthapuram at 7:30 a.m. the next day. The flight will be a blessing for 290,000 Indians in Bahrain in which mostly are from Kerala. Air India now operates 20 flights a week to five destinations in India.

Fare Cuts by Jet Airways and Air India

Jet Airways and Air India has announced to cut their air fares and revised rates will be in effect from 1st January’09 in which Jet airways will cut the fare up to 40% on domestic routes. The air fares will go on like this Rs 2000 for Mumbai-Delhi flight, Rs 4065 for Mumbai-Kolkata route, Rs 1220 for Bangalore-Mumbai and as low as Rs 500 for Mumbai-Ahmadabad flight. Taxes of Rs 3,500 are also to be included on each ticket. This means that the total cost of an air ticket will be with taxes.

Another airline Kingfisher airline has also stated that fare cut will be implemented by New Year. The Indian air operators are reluctant to revise air fares despite the fall in fuel prices. The demand of aviation turbine fuel under the declared goods category by Indian air operators will bring down the sales tax from an average of 32% at other airports to a uniform 4% and due to this Indian aviation ministry has forced the major airline companies to go for fare cuts.

British Airway’s equity stake in Go Air

The British Airway’s chasing a 25% stake in Indian Go Air airlines. The officials have decided to have a meet in London for the further discussions sources says that British Airways has tried Last Year to reach a code sharing agreement with Go Air. Go Air spokesperson says that the airlines has 2.3% share in the market and would welcome such a change in policy and British Airways refuses what is said.

Foreign airlines will be allowed to invest in domestic airlines with a cap of nearly 26% with India’s changed policy plan. Though Go Air faced losses last year still it is a closely held company with its financial numbers not in the public. The decision to scale up the fleet by 35 aircrafts will be fulfilled till March 2011, recently added six and will add 20 by end of this year.

New Overseas Operations Launch by Kingfisher Airlines

Kingfisher airlines have announced its service of daily international flight from Mumbai to London with effect from 5^th January’09. After this launch the Kingfisher airlines will have two overseas operations. It’s already running Bangalore to London flight was launched in September last year. Airline has also decided to launch Mumbai-Hong Kong operations from 12^th January’09 and Mumbai-Singapore operations from 16^th January’09. Kingfisher airlines have also planned to Launch Bangalore-Chennai-Colombo flight service from 19^th January’09 onwards.

The timings of the Mumbai-London flight will take off at 1:50 p.m. from Mumbai and it will arrive at Heathrow at 5:55 p.m. The return flight would leave London at 8:30 p.m. and will arrive the next day at 11 a.m. in the morning.

10 Flight attendants of Air India got fired

Air India fires it’s 10 flight attendants, the reason was they were exceptionally overweight.They were firstly made to do ground duty for several years but recently got fired when found unfit during a medical test, in which medical board declared them unfit for duty. In response the airline says they were given time to shed weight but still they failed to do so.

Some of the air hostesses have also approached the Delhi High Court for a legal challenge against the airlines, but it was later thrown out. Weight is the main criteria for being selected in an airlines job and this is not the first time an airline has sacked its employees for being overweight.

Oil companies strike affect airlines

The state-run oil companies proposed strike from 7th January’09. 55,000 officers of 14 Oil companies announced strike on 6th January’09 which is definitely going to affect the airlines. In response Jet airways said “Jet airways and JetLite flights will not be affected by the strike and flights will be operated as per normal schedule”, Kingfisher airlines said they were already prepared to deal with the situation, Air India too said this strike won’t affect their daily flight operations.

On the whole the airlines pretend that they are not being affected by the oil companies strike but somewhere an impact will be seen in the flight operations due to this strike as the time passes by.