Airliners-India.com

[Spiderguy252]

Welcome to Part 15. Make this another 10 page thread.
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Yeah.

[iah87]

Is there any possibility that AI will return to South Africa ?

[Nimish]

[Spiderguy252]

[sunny84]

[AirIndia0001]

Good Move.
Also, AI and SAA should jointly market the India-JNB-GRU route.

[avbuff]

Air India Stupidity:

AI and IC have flights on DEL - DXB sector just an hour ahead of each other.

[777-237LR]

The Joke of The Day




A few questions to ponder upon

Air India and Indian (Indian Airlines) merger; what was the rationale...

Synergy of 2 units merge into one...

Have a bigger fleet...

Have a bigger and unified employee strength...

Now what happened...

Jeddah for example:

Extremely lucrative sector. Any carrier flies into Jeddah fills dirt cheap fuel upto the brim for its onward, return journey.

Jeddah allows only 2 airlines per country. Previously it was Indian Airlines and Air India and now both of them are one. So Jet Airways walks into this sector. Surprising Jet flies with packed house whereas Air India has not been able to declare this sector as lucrative as it could have been. There has been cases in past when people could not manage tickets with the national carrier and still it was not flying 100%

Now who laughs at the joke at whose cost???

Singapore a strange coincidence:

Air India jet is grounded for technical nag. An engineer is flown especially into Singapore and he declares the aircraft unfit for flight. On the other hand Jet flies out of Singapore with full house and Mr Naresh Goyal personally welcomes all the guests when they land in India. Well it could be a coincidence but a little strange.

Who laughs at the joke at whose cost???

London another example:

Air India gets 12 landing slots in London for all its operations. A decent figure by any means that too in London. Air India over last 4 years slowly shifts its European base from London to Frankfurt??? Shifting base from London to Frankfurt!!! a business decesion probably has some economic reason... but leaving London market to private carriers for their operations... sounds fishy.

Strangely now Air India operates 2 flights from and through London and rest has gone to private airlinrs operating out of India.

What a Joke!!!

[Spiderguy252]

[avbuff]

@B777-237LR

Is this a paragraph extracted from some article or something?

If not then these facts in the post are nothing short of a joke

* IC NEVER had rights to operate to Saudia Arabia and it was one airline from each country till last year when Saudi Arabia themselves so that they could have Sama Air operating to BOM

* AI filling up cheap fuel to the brim is a something I do not believe. Isn't there something like Maximum Landing weight?

[jasepl]

http://blogs.timesofindia.com/Swaminomics/entry/let-air-india-fade-away

Highlights:

* Air India lost Rs 5,000 crore last year, and is surviving on huge government handouts. Opposition politicians are critical, but reject any cut in its bloated staff... Praful Patel proposes to hive off surplus staff to some new corporations. Problem: the new corporations, with the same faulty staff and culture, may suffer the same fate.

* Air India has never been viewed by politicians as a commercial venture, but a vehicle for serving VIPs and satisfying political pressures to fly to certain destinations.

* Patel insists that new planes are needed to replace old ones. Phooey, say critics, who smell something rotten in the purchase deals.

* Critics have lambasted Patel for signing bilateral deals with several countries... this has enabled foreign airlines to greatly improve their market share at the expense of Air India.

* We should actually congratulate Patel for bringing real competition after decades into air traffic. This new competition has greatly increased passenger choice and convenience, reduced fares, and improved quality. Passengers have never had it so good.

* If millions of passengers have benefited while Air India has wilted, we should cheer, not complain.

* A good civil aviation minister must maximize the interest of air passengers, not public sector behemoths. Praful Patel has done so, and needs full support in this respect. He must hold steadfast to his excellent policy of liberalizing the skies. If this means a sliding market share for Air India, so be it.

* Passengers might one day prove with their wallets that Jet is the national airline — it has an international reputation for quality, and could build on this. But passengers view Air India as a national disgrace, not a national champion.

* One way forward is to privatise Air India.... If this proves politically impossible, then Air India should be allowed to lose market share and slide gently into insignificance.

* Once called national champions, IDPL, HEC and HMT have faded away, and India is the better for it. Let Air India go the same way.

[Nimish]

[jasepl]

[sri_bom]

Air India announced it is considering plans to launch Surat-Jeddah service in 2010, catering to Haj pilgrims. The carrier is expected to submit a proposal to the Airports Authority of India soon (The Times of India, 19-Jul-09).


Air India reportedly announced plans to reduce the employee retirement age from 58 to 55, which could reduce its current workforce from 31,000 to 27,000 staff (The Times of India, 21-Jul-09).

Sri_Bom

[Kabir]

There is a huge spread on Air India in today's HT Mint if anyone is interested.

[Kabir-de-saint]

[Nimish]

[iah87]

A few elements of the merger have been implemented. For example, the AI flies BOM-HYD flight as an IC coded in the evening, but on the return it becomes a HYD-BOM AI flight flying to the international terminal.

The first thing they need to do is to merger the websites together and code share all the flights across AI, AIX and IC.

[avbuff]

I don't think AIX will come in any code share implementation. After all it is an LCC.

[AirIndia0001]

[avbuff]

BTW

IIRC wasn't IC operating a daily MAA - BKK flight?

It seems that sector has stopped. Was it reported earlier?

[maut3000]

[maut3000]

[maut3000]

[maut3000]

[maut3000]

And its so good to be back after a year on this forum

Hello all !!!

[Nimish]

[maut3000]

[Boeing7xx]

We just came in on 14 at Bombay today, wet runway & a shorter runway didn't make things easier.... Came to the cabin to see off the passengers and the smiling faces and this one middle-aged man who walked up, smiled and said "Thank You, happy landings" made my day.

WE are the new Air India.

Resting now for 2 days.

[avbuff]

[JETFLY787]

Hey Does any one know what are the loss making routes for AI and the ones which make money for them even if little. ANy clues. What about 9W I know this is not the 9W thread but if no one minds me asking it here.
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Lets Soar High....Feel the ultimate Joy

[maut3000]

[AirIndia0001]

[Devesh]

On a lighter note.

Have a video of VT-ALO AI B77W leaving Paine field for Delhi on its delivery flight.

http://www.bangaloreaviation.com/2009/07/video-air-india-boeing-777-300er-vt-alo.html

Has special significance for us in Bangalore -- the plane is named Karnataka.

Over the next two days videos of the next AI B772LR and Jet's latest B77W will be posted.
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Devesh
Bangalore Aviation

[747-237]

[Aiel]

The latest art from AIX VT-AYB, courtesy Rick Schlamp




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My Flickr photos

My JP.net account

[JETFLY787]

[garytare]

It can happen only in India. Every day flight AI 187 flies from Amritsar to London. The crew, though, is not based in Amritsar. The pilots and cabin crew fly from Mumbai. It is not an isolated instance. The erstwhile Indian Airlines (IA) has daily flights from Thiruvananthapuram to Male. The crew for this 40 minutes flight of IC 963 flies over four hours from Delhi to Thiruvananthapuram.

Loss cause

Top five loss-making routes:

Delhi-New York
Rs 236 Cr*
Mumbai-Hong Kong
Rs 235 Cr
Delhi-London-JFK
Rs 224 Cr
Mumbai-London-Chicago
Rs 128 Cr
Mumbai-London
Rs 118 Cr

*Losses annualised

Similarly, for the Chennai-Singapore AI 9555 or AI 9557 flights, the crew is from Delhi. The meter for the crew starts ticking when they leave home. Now add up the costs.

The loss of revenue on dozen plus business class seats back and forth, wages for the hours wasted, cost of five-star stay, flying allowances for travelling time, the dislocation allowance that costs the airline Rs 12 crore a year and the resultant lower revenue.

It is two years since the merger of the two airlines—Air India (AI) and IA—but till a few weeks back two directors used to fly everyday from Delhi to Mumbai, the new headquarters, for work Senior pilots on desk jobs get flying allowances even when they don’t fly because junior pilots may otherwise draw higher salaries.

Is it any surprise then that the airline is losing Rs 10 crore a day? Last week when Civil Aviation Ministry officials met Manmohan Singh, an aghast prime minister was told that the net worth was zero and without a working capital support of at least Rs 7,500 crore the airline would be grounded.

While Manmohan said the airline “couldn’t be allowed to die”, he chided the officials and asked why the rot was allowed to spread. Why, is a tough question but how, is visible. With 31,000 people on its rolls and 20,000 on contract and 14 volatile unions, the airline has 227 employees for every aircraft it owns, many the legacy of a closed economy. For instance, nobody quite knows when, but darzis were appointed to darn seat covers.

Last week ministry officials discovered that they earned over Rs 1,25,000 per month for something that could be easily outsourced and, at a much lesser outgo. Its canteens have 1,000 people. This again could be outsourced. By some peculiar calculation the airline pays its deputy maintenance engineer Rs 50,954 as salary and Rs 1,68,821 as productivitylinked incentive (PLI) even as the operating losses (mind you this is just cost minus expenses) plummeted from Rs 333 crore in 2005-06 to Rs 3,149 crore in 2008-09. Sure there has been some hiccup over wage boards and PLI is a surrogate pay revision; but is it linked to productivity or revenue?

Nevertheless, the Maharaja hasn’t been grounded by overweight baggage of loose change. Nor did it happen overnight. As the economy opened up, the creatures of the Socialist era were expected to compete. Successive governments promised change but the airlines, like the mythical Centaur, continued to be half human and half beast. Ill-equipped and burdened with an ageing fleet they serviced non-viable destinations like Kabul and Dhaka even as private airlines were not required to. Caught between poor leadership and political whims, the airlines limped with no attempt at restructuring.


When Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel arrived at Rajiv Gandhi Bhavan in 2004, he brought promise. He opened up the sector to new airlines, creating capacity, competitive pricing and growth. Patel also pushed through the biggest, 111 aircraft acquisition plan for a whopping $10 billion. Backed by the Left Front, he also pushed for the longdiscussed AI-IAmerger. In theory, as that is what consultants Accenture suggested, the merged entity would save Rs 600 crore in costs and enable the airlines to compete and deliver profits.
On the runway, though, the theory didn’t quite take off. When aircraft did arrive, the airlines had not planned for crew and marketing. Over a dozen aircraft, including brand new 777s were idling as the interest meter ticked at the banks. Yield per passenger km has dropped to Rs 3 and just a 10 paise drop would translate into Rs 300 crore losses.

There is no progress on restructuring, productivity or market share acquisition either. Even today, the merged entity has two directors each, for operations, engineering, finance and, till recently, for HR, too. Four of 10 seats go empty; it loses Rs 1,200 crore on just 10 routes and continues to be two airlines under one name.

[Nimish]

[Jaysit]

Delhi-London-JFK and Mumbai-London-Chicago no longer operate.

As for the Delhi-JFK route, and the Mumbai-London route, these numbers were derived when (i) AI operated two flights to JFK from Delhi which it now no longer does; and (ii) when it operated nearly a dozen random flights from BOM to LHR on a mix of khatara leased 767s, 772s, and its very own lousy 744s.