Vistara Airlines

The Tatas have come up with another airlines venture, the Vistara Airlines. Recently, it came up with AirAsia India, which was a low cost carrier with operations focussed in Southern India. This time a premium segment airline, focussed in the northern India with Delhi Airport hub has been planned.

The aviation sector in India is not a reliable arena, considering that only 1 airline in profitable. In India, services are not respected a lot, and considering a premium airline to be launched is a kind of weird decision, because, all flights in India have a maximum duration of 2 hours, which is quite less.

Vistara Airlines ha 20 A320`s on order which will be delivered within 5 years, after which it`ll be eligible to begin overseas operations. Initially, this airlines will plan to connect Delhi with all the major tier 1 and tier 2 cities.

It would be interesting to see how this airlines fares considering that in the past the Tatas have had multiple failed bids to acquire Air India.

Air India, is it that bad ??

On my recent trip, rather than taking a foreign airline ticket, I decided to book direct flight tickets with Air India, I wanted the firsthand experience of Air India and forget how badly it has always been criticized by the media. I was booked. Even I had doubts if the plane would take-off or would it be cancelled like we read in the papers all the time. I reached the airport a cool 5 hours before time, because I wanted to see the Mumbai Airport Terminal 2 at length. It was mid-night flight, the flight took off... The crew began offering beverages, snacks, to the passengers who were awake and hungry. Mine was a special meal so I was the first one to receive my food. I asked for additional bread, to which the air hostess politely replied, "On the returning from the end", yes indeed when she returned she handed me some more and after some time, she again asked if I wanted anything else. Meanwhile, the guy in the row ahead of me, was so drunk that he passed out in the alley, within minutes another guy in the front row seat also passed out.  So on my outward trip I came to one conclusion, that the crew was very well trained, and they did a great job overall, there was literally nothing which was out of order.

On inward flight, a big tour group of some 40 odd people boarded the plane, not to forget, they very jolly and friendly amongst their group. The moment the flight took off, before the air hostess` could give us anything, the people from this group started distributing wafers, gathiyas, kachoris to one another.... and then they started distributing to the co-passengers also. They were repeatedly warned to take their seats but then they would not listen, despite their wives being with them, they misbehaved and kept drinking. The Air India Employees were not able to provide food/beverage services in their regular fashion because of this confusion. Had this been the case in a popular airline then, they would have been hand cuffed or duct taped to their seats like the poor guy below.

Further, the guys from the group even started clicking photos of the Air Hostesses, in all unruly behavior. It was certainly an embarrassment to our whole culture. Some Europeans were also on board, I bet they would have pledged that they`d never fly on any airlines from India, nor have a layover at an Indian airport by mistake. 

Finally we landed in Mumbai and I had a new image of Air India in my mind. I can proudly announce that the service which was offered by Air India was actually awesome, but it is us who fly on board are not allowing the crew to function properly. If we don`t allow them to carry out their task efficiently then we should not complaint either.

Dear Brothers and Sisters from India, how well behaved are we when we fly with foreign carriers, then why not behave well in our own Air India flight ??

Emirates Receives Its 50th A380 Jumbo

Emirates received its 50th A380 today, and still continues to be the undisputed leader with the highest A380s in its fleet.

With this addition, this newest A380 aircraft will be taken for operations by August. It is estimated that by late 2017, there would be a total of 90 A380s in the Emirates fleet in operation. Currently 27 airports are being served with the A380 by Emirates alone. By the end of this fiscal year, the number of destinations will rise to 33 after the gradual addition of Kuwait, Mumbai(YES our MUMBAI !!!), Frankfurt, Dallas, San Francisco and Houston.

With 50 A380s already delivered to Emirates, deliveries are still pending for an additional 90. And no surprises that in case Airbus chooses to offer the A380-NEO(New Engine Option), which Emirates is asking for, who knows, it is quite likely that Emirates may add more of the double deckers to their fleet.

Literally, the A380s of the Emirates fly from one corner of the world to another, Los Angeles in one end, to Auckland in the other end.


Image Courtesy of bhmpics.com

Mumbai Aviation: A Soon To Be Extinct Species

Mumbai Airport, or as locally called the Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport, is perhaps the most important place in the whole of India.

Be it Business, Glamour, Travel or a Fun trip, a person is most likely to land in Mumbai. This airport began operation as early as in the year 1942, this is one of the few airport in the world which is located in the middle of the city and not in the suburbs or the out skirts of the city. This airport is the hub for India`s flagship airline the Air India and its competitor Jet Airways. Time and again this airport has seen developments in the limited space, but there is no room for further development or to make a ground making change because of the lack of additional space. This airport has 2 very long runways, but then they cannot be used simultaneously due to their intersecting nature. 

Unlike the EU airports, this airport functions 24 hours round the clock, even with just a single runway operation this airport comfortably manages over 250,000 aircraft operations and almost over 3 million passenger pass through this airport annually. In February, 2014 Terminal 2 began operations which was perhaps the best terminal building which could have been ever built. It is not just a terminal or a building, it is a museum, it has tons of artwork, paintings, statues, etc, where seeing all the display items would need a 4km walk, pretty amazing. Having traveled to London`s Heathrow Airport, New York`s JFK Airport, Boston`s Logan Airport, Abu Dhabi Airport, Bangkok`s Suvarnabhumi Airport and a couple others, I can proudly say that India has made a big statement and shown the world what they can achieve when they are hell bent. A person having a connecting flight may miss the next flight as he may be so engrossed with the art work in this airport.

What is missing in Mumbai Airport ??

Being a huge business district, Mumbai definitely attracts a huge set of travelers, but what Airports Authority of India (AAI) failed to understand is that for airports to expand they must be extended horizontally and not vertically, but there is no space for the horizontal expansion,  and there you go, this is a need for a new airport at a new location close to Mumbai. The solution was Navi Mumbai Airport, which is a decade old plan and has been delayed by a number of reasons.

Will the Navi Mumbai Airport be enough ?

For starters the Navi Mumbai airport will have 2 parallel runways just like London`s Heathrow airport, which was built in the 1960s....

Seriously ?? Mumbai is putting up a plan which was used by the Brits 50 years ago, this clearly shows the lack of planning and management. Is Mumbai 50 years behind the United Kingdom?? Heathrow airport is operating at 98% capacity which means, newer airlines are not given additional landing slots. So if Mumbai has a new 2 runway airport then in just 10 years, because of tremendous demand, the airport will be operating at full capacity and there shall be need for a third airport, which shall take again 2 decades of planning and construction.

Seeing the forecast, it seems that Mumbai actually needs a 4 parallel runway airport just like the one in Los Angeles Airport (LAX), because Mumbai is in the centre of Europe Africa, Asia and Australian sub-continent, which means if there is infrastructure, foreign airlines may consider it as their secondary hub also. This location could act as an onward connection for flights between Europe-Australia, Africa-China, Gulf-Far East & a lot of other combinations.

Mumbai Airport fared far better than most of the other airport in the Asian sub-continent a couple decades ago, but now even underdeveloped economies like Indonesia, Taiwan, Philippines have better planning and better airports to give their economy a boost, seems like the planners have not thought the process all the way through.

An important lesson which we can learn is that Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Qatar and other gulf cities have all got huge just because they focused really well in the aviation business, they literally stole the charm from the European airports by planning and operating better. Another example to consider is the Suvarnabhumi airport of Bangkok, currently they are working on a 2 runway system, but they reserved enough space to construct a total 5 runways, a country like Thai is setting the priorities right.

Mumbai, a city which never sleeps, is actually sleeping in the Aviation department, and lesser aviation business means, hurting the local economy, AAI, do something, Mumbai is the Los Angeles of India.

The Beast A380 Comes to Mumbai

The legendary Airbus A380, has been going places since years, but due to regulations in India, it was still not to be seen at any Airport in India. It is good that, the DGCA(Directorate General of Civil Aviation, Government of India) realized that it was loosing the flying race to the Gulf Carriers like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar and later they approved the A380 to operate at its major airports (Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore and Chennai).

9 out of the 10 operators who fly the A380 have scheduled operation to India, so the market surely exists for this particular model in the country.

Late in the month of May, Singapore Airlines became the first airline to have scheduled A380 operation in India with a daily services to Delhi and Mumbai. Emirates is not far behind in making a decision, it has quickly picked its favoured destination Mumbai for operations. And now Lufthansa is planning to deploy two planes for the Delhi and Mumbai flights from its global hub the Frankfurt Airport, popularly know as the Fraport.

The Mumbai airport is so unprepared, that increasing passenger numbers is impossible and there is no additional space to either build a huge terminal or add an additional runway. All the landing slots are sold off at Mumbai, the number of seats are limited and tickets to fly in and out of Mumbai is higher compared to other cities in the world. The best an airline could do is, send in their biggest planes to Mumbai.

Before the A380, the largest plane to be allowed to operate at any Indian airport was the Boeing 747, which is again, disappearing quickly because they are being replaced by better, lighter and more fuel efficient planes like the B777, B787 and A330 which are all twin engined and have lower cost per passenger to operate and still fly on the long haul routes.