B788 seat plan air india

The revised check-in baggage limit is effective from Saturday

A day after announcing its ticket prices at par with AC II of Rajdhani trains, National carrier Air India, on Friday, came out with another lucrative offer for its passengers allowing enhanced free check-in baggage on its jumbo 747 flights operating on the trunk Delhi-Mumbai route.

Besides, the carrier also announced heavily discounted fares, starting at Rs 15,000 for travel in first class of its Queen of the Skies (Boeing 747) flights to the two cities till January 15, a release said.

The revised check-in baggage limit is effective from Saturday, it said.

Air India had commenced the 423 seater Boeing 747 services between New Delhi and Mumbai early last month.

At present, Air India allows 25kg in economy class and 35kg in business class of free check-in baggage on its flights, which has now been increased to 40 kg and 50 kg, respectively, on Boeing 747 Delhi- Mumbai service, the airline said in the release.

As against this, private carriers allow only 15 kg of free baggage to passengers across their domestic flights.

“Following its successful decision to deploy the iconic Boeing 747 on Delhi-Mumbai route from December 13 last year, Air India will now allow up to 40kg and 50kg of free check-in baggage for both economy and business class passengers on these flights,” it said.

Air India is the only carrier to operate the 423 seater, four engine jumbo jet B747, on this busiest route (Delhi-Mumbai) of the country, the release said adding the aircraft offers a premium value to passengers with the most private and exclusive accommodation in the sky with 12 First class seats on the upper deck of the aircraft, 26 seats in business, and the rest 385 in economy.

State carrier Air India on Friday barred Shiv Sena MP Ravindra Gaikwad, who had assaulted its staffer, from its flights and even cancelled his return ticket to Pune from Delhi.

Gaikwad, who has been unapologetic about the incident on Thursday, had earlier on Friday said that he will be taking the Air India flight in the evening.

Air India said it has also written to the Shiv Sena communicating the decision to cancel the ticket. Shiv Sena Secretary Anil Desai said that he has asked Gaikwad to change his travel plans as the party doesn’t want the tensions to escalate.

Gaikwad was booked on Delhi to Pune flight AI 849 scheduled for departure at 4 pm on Friday.

“We have intimated Shiv Sena that we can’t fly Gaikwad on his return flight because our employees are agitated. He has assured us that the party will advise the MP not to fly Air India today,” said an Air India source.

WATCH THE VIDEO OF GAIKWAD HITTING THE AIR INDIA STAFFER

“Our airport employees have said that they won’t attend to him and they won’t let him enter. In order to avoid any violence, we have written to Shiv Sena,” he added.

Budget carrier IndiGo also refused to take him on board.

The Sena MP had booked a ticket on IndiGo flight to Pune for Friday evening, which has been cancelled by the airline, sources said.

“He had booked on IndiGo’s fight today at 1750 hours from Delhi to Pune. But the airline has cancelled the booking and is refunding the entire amount,” the source told PTI .

In a related development, Tata-SIA joint venture carrier Vistara also joined the national carrier Air India and four private carriers’ decision to ban Gaikwad from flying.

Disruptive and abusive behaviour by passengers is a serious issue and cannot be tolerated, both for safety and security reasons in a critical and sensitive industry such as aviation, as well for the safety and well-being of our staff and all other passengers, a Vistara spokesperson said.

“We support the statement made by Air India and the FIA, and are in full solidarity with them in support of the ban. The concerned individual will be barred from flying on any of our flights with immediate effect,” the spokesperson said.

The airline also supports the promulgation of a “no-fly” list and concurs with the FIA and Air India in seeking the support of the Government and security agencies to enforce such a directive whereby passengers on the “no fly list” will not be permitted to fly on any of the airlines, Vistara said.

Gaikwad told TV channels on Friday morning, “I am booked on a 4 pm flight to Pune. I will take that flight. How can they not let me travel when I have a booking and I am their passenger.”

Desai, also an MP, said that he has “acceded” to Air India’s request and has also asked Gaikwad to “change his travel plans”.

“An Air India official called me that their staff is upset over the issue. I have acceded to their request by asking my MP not to go ahead with his plan to fly Air India today,” said Desai .

“I have also asked him to change his travel plans. We don’t intend to escalate the tension,” he added.

Earlier, The Federation of Indian Airlines, which has Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and GoAir as its members, has taken a “strong view of the incident and accordingly taken a decision to bar Gaikwad from flying,” an FIA source said.

The FIA will not allow the Sena MP to fly on its member carriers, the source said.

It is likely to come out with a detailed statement on the issue soon.

Meanwhile, budget carrier IndiGo on Friday said it will support any move which bars unruly passengers from flying, a day after Air India said it was mulling preparing a no-fly list for such people.

“We will support a no-fly list,” IndiGo President and Whole Time Director Aditya Ghosh said.

Disagree with the Shiv Sena MP’s actions? BOO him!

Tata Group-owned Air India is considering buying more than 200 new planes with 70 per cent of them being narrow-bodied aircraft, aviation industry sources said on Sunday.

While Air India has zeroed in on Airbus’s A350 wide-bodied aircraft for the procurement, the talks with Airbus and Boeing for narrow-bodied aircraft is still on, they said.

A wide-bodied plane like Airbus A350 has a bigger fuel tank that allows it to travel longer distances such as the India-US routes.

Air India has not bought a single aircraft since 2006 when it placed orders for purchasing 111 aircraft – 68 from the US-based aircraft manufacturer Boeing and 43 from European aircraft manufacturer Airbus.

The Tata Group took control of Air India on January 27 after successfully winning the bid for the airline on October 8 last year.

On the sidelines of 78th annual general meeting of International Air Transport Association, aviation industry sources said Air India is considering buying 200 new planes.

The share of narrow-bodied aircraft to that of wide-bodied planes will be 70:30.

They said that the decision on which narrow-bodied plane to buy – to go for Airbus A320 family aircraft or Boeing’s 737Max aircraft – is yet to be taken.

According to Air India’s website, the airline has a total of 49 wide-bodied aircraft – 18 Boeing B777, 4 Boeing B747 and 27 Boeing B787 – in its fleet.

The carrier has 79 narrow-bodied planes in its fleet too.

Domestic airports across the country are bursting at the seams. And new ones are stuck.

Surajeet Das Gupta takes stock.

A senior executive of a leading Indian carrier complains that his airline has not been granted a single additional slot to fly during peak hours in Mumbai in the last 12 months.

“We can easily grow traffic by 15 per cent a year from the city, but we have no choice but to wait for five or six years till the new airport comes up,” he says, predicting that such capacity constraints will force air fares to hit the stratosphere.

Mumbai, the country’s second-busiest airport, is no outlier. In Delhi airport, the busiest, additional slots during peak hour traffic have all but dried up — this year’s summer schedule saw no additional flight slot allotted between 7 am and 10 pm.

Domestic airports across the country are bursting at the seams.

Consider the predicament of State-owned Airport Authority of India (AAI): 25 of the 126 airports that it operates have reached saturation point. These airports together are already handling 7 million more passengers a year from their stated maximum capacity, which explains the teeming crowds at check-in counters and growing flight delays.

In Chennai, the domestic terminal was built for 10 million passengers a year; it now handles 13.15 million passengers a year.

Capacity constraints are one problem.

Airports like Delhi and Mumbai, which together account for 35 per cent of domestic passenger traffic, lack enough runways to accommodate the unprecedented increase in aircraft and demand for new flights.

The crunch is especially severe during peak hours (6-8 am and 5-7 pm) when most corporate travellers, who constitute 70 per cent of air traffic, fly.

A spokesperson for Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) said peak-hour handling capacity at the airport has gone up by only one flight to 46 in 2017, over the last year. She added that efforts are being made to handle more flights, but didn’t give any deadline.

AAI data shows that the airport, with a capacity of 45.2 million, saw the number of aircraft movements fall 1 per cent in the April-June period this year.

For airlines, the looming crisis could not have come at a more inopportune time.

With global aviation turbine fuel prices dropping dramatically making flying more affordable, domestic air traffic grew 23 per cent in 2016 to hit 100 million. Now analysts reckon that the lack of airport infrastructure will crimp growth to around 15 per cent in 2017.

And with Indian airlines having ordered over 500 new aircraft, about 50 new planes are being added annually to the overall domestic fleet (currently pegged at 300).

This demand-supply mismatch appears to have caught state and central governments unawares.

“Airports need to be planned and constructed much in advance of the existing airport getting saturated. The oil price crash in early 2015 did catch everyone by surprise but that’s not a good excuse why airport expansion projects were delayed,” says Amber Dubey, partner and India head of aerospace and defence at global consultancy KPMG.

As he points out, the 12th Plan released in early 2012 predicted airport throughput in FY17 at 270 million.

“The actual number was tantalisingly close, at 264 million,” he says, adding, “For the next five years, we will lose a part of the growth that could have happened if we had built capacity in advance of the projected demand.”

Any new capacity will only be on stream in two or five years in the most optimistic scenario. Most of the them are in various stages of finalisation and construction is yet to begin.

As many as 12 new airports are awaiting land acquisition by the respective state governments.

So, why are airports in a mess?

One key reason is the inordinate delay in acquisition of land.

“Land acquisition laws have made the process highly restrictive and costly. The other challenge is that the authorities involved in land acquisition face unpopularity and sometimes violent protests, whereas the kudos go to the ones who inaugurate the airport six to eight years down the line,” says Dubey.

This apart, paying compensation for farmers remains a sticking point.

“The problem is how do you compensate farmers who have lost land, but see prices of the neighbouring land go through the roof when the airport is built. So, they baulk and get into legal wrangling” says a senior state government official who has dealt with the issue.

The classic case is the Navi Mumbai airport, which was conceived nearly two decades ago, but was stuck because of huge problems in land acquisition, multiple legal cases and controversies over environmental clearances.

The latest deadline for the airport is 2019, but everybody knows this is wishful thinking as Hyderabad-based GVK, which won the bid a few months ago , has still not been given the letter of award.

The lack of airport infrastructure has almost stymied the government’s high-profile UDAN programme to enhance regional connectivity.

“There are problems in the revival of non-AAI airports because state governments, public sector corporation owners like SAIL and private airports like Mithapur or Raigarh are not confident about how fast they can get their airports up and running,” says AAI chairman Guruprasad Mohapatra.

AAI hopes to help them open in the next two or three months, but this is unlikely to alleviate the shortage of airport capacity quickly.

For instance, Air Odisha, which won routes connecting smaller cities with Delhi and other state capitals, nine of the 32 airports for which it received permission to fly under UDAN are not ready.

“Worse, we have flights from smaller cities to Delhi, but Delhi International Airport [DIAL] has not given us the three slots we require as they have no space. So, what do we do?” said an airline source.

Ironically, airport infrastructure shortages hinder the roll-out of new technology that would reduce congestion.

Low-cost airline IndiGo, for instance, has over one quarter of its passengers using the self-help kiosks to check in. But a request to increase the number of kiosks in some key airports has been shelved for lack of space, said an airline source.

Airlines also blame AAI for the way it operates.

“There is no transparency about its growth plans for various airports or how they fix peak traffic handling capacity. For instance, why should Jaipur airport handle only 12 flights an hour and not more? We are never told,” a senior executive of a leading airline points out.

AAI, however, says that it has put up a capex plan of ₹17,500 crore for airport infrastructure in the next five years.

It is also spending ₹300 crore to operationalise the 31 unserved airports under the UDAN scheme and would require another ₹2,000 crore to upgrade them in the long run.

Many in the aviation business say it is unfair to blame AAI since it is dependent on state governments identifying and giving them land in many airports.

As for private airport developers, airlines argue that they are interesting in flogging their existing assets to make money and have no incentive to using their cash flows to expand, since that would entail taking on more debt.

DIAL, for instance, has made ₹586 crore in profit after tax in FY 2017 on the back of substantial increases in airport charges, and its new expansion project would require taking some debt. But with the regulator reducing the charges once again, analysts say DIAL’s profit will fall dramatically.

Sources in DIAL say that the airport’s peak capacity is 72 flights an hour, which might go up a little bit after the ATC is upgraded.

But an exponential increase in capacity will be possible only once the expansion is completed in three or four years.

A proposal for a second airport for the National Capital Region in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, might take years to fructify; it will be considered by the state government this financial year.

“DIAL’s tariffs are set by the regulator; its returns are also fixed. And expansion has to be done in tandem with the government. Can we blame them for the delays?” says a senior executive who works closely with private airport developers.

One positive unintended consequence of the choking in airports is a focus on regional connectivity as a serious business.

IndiGo, for instance, has announced orders for 50 ATRs to run on less crowded regional routes, marking a change from its earlier plan to have only a one plane configuration.

The government and the airports are looking at some interim measures to partly resolve the looming crises. One is to ask airlines to put in larger aircraft in airports like Mumbai and Delhi to increase passenger capacity (Jet Airways and Air India have started using Boeing 777 and 787 aircraft).

The aviation ministry has also mooted a proposal to ease the pressure on Delhi airport by opening up the Air Force-controlled Hindon for civilian flights.

In Bangalore and Chennai, construction of rapid exit taxiways is helping increase the hourly peak flight handling capacity (in Bangalore it has gone up from 34 to 38).

But these are minor solutions to a major problem. Harried passengers will have to live with snaking check-in queues and chaos at baggage handling for more years to come.

There is no reason for keeping an entire ministry with a total staff strength of 2,300, just for the oversight of a few aviation sector laws and regulatory bodies, notes A K Bhattacharya.

The Narendra Modi government’s decision to privatise Air India was an important milestone. The decision signified the launch of the Modi government’s privatisation programme and marked the first outright sale of a state-owned enterprise in the last 18 years.

It was a difficult transaction, given the huge debt Air India had piled up over the years. No doubt the government got very little money from the sale and is now left with the debt that has been transferred to a newly created holding company. But the daily bleeding of the Centre’s finances by about Rs 20 crore (Rs 200 million) should come to an end when in December the privatisation deal is concluded.

If Air India goes back to its original owner — the Tatas — the government too will be left with no airline to look after. Does it then not mean that the privatisation decision should be quickly followed up with some major restructuring of the civil aviation ministry that used to look after Air India?

Indeed, the gains from the sale of Air India would be incomplete if follow-up steps are not taken to reorganise the civil aviation ministry at the Centre. Reforms of this ministry are long overdue, and the Air India sale should expedite such a decision.

What does the Union civil aviation ministry do?

The ministry is responsible for formulating national policies and programmes for the development and regulation of the civil aviation sector in the country. It is also responsible for the administration of the Aircraft Act, Aircraft Rules and a few other laws pertaining to the aviation sector.

More importantly, the ministry exercises administrative control of organisations such as the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security, the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority of India, the Commission of Railway Safety, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau, the Airports Authority of India and Air India.

Now that Air India has been sold, the civil aviation ministry will certainly have some surplus capacity in terms of its manpower. A quick look at the work allocation among senior officers of the ministry shows that Air India takes up the bulk of the work of three senior officials — a joint secretary, a director and an under-secretary. These officers can be easily redeployed in some other ministries, or the manpower size of the civil aviation ministry could be suitably curtailed.

Indeed, the justification for such re-sizing of the civil aviation ministry arises not just because of the sale of Air India. There is no reason for keeping an entire ministry with a total staff strength of 2,300, just for the oversight of a few aviation sector laws and regulatory bodies.

Ideally, the DGCA should be hived off as an independent regulatory organisation. The aviation regulator should not have been an extension of the ministry. Instead, let it be an independent and suitably empowered regulator, without being guided and influenced by the aviation ministry.

In any case, you don’t need a joint secretary in the ministry, along with two other senior officers — of the rank of a director and an under-secretary, to oversee the functioning of a regulator. Such a structure can play havoc with the autonomy of a regulator.

The ministry should lay down the policy and give the DGCA the freedom to implement the policy. If there is a need for an appellate body to address grievances of aviation players against decisions taken by the DGCA, such a body should be created, instead of the civil aviation ministry taking such calls on dispute settlement.

Similarly, the AERAI should not be treated by the civil aviation ministry as one of the organisations over which it must exercise its administrative control. With a massive plan to hand over the ownership and management of many airports to private enterprises, the AERAI must not be seen as an extension of the civil aviation ministry.

This is particularly important to dispel any impression of any private sector operator of an airport using its political connections to exercise influence over airport regulation in a way that could give it an unfair advantage over its rivals.

The functioning of organisations like the BCAS and the AAIB should also be made independent of the civil aviation ministry. The functions and role of these organisations are best performed if they do not operate as an extension of the ministry.

The intent of the legislation behind their creation, just as those for the DGCA and the AERAI, was to facilitate their functioning autonomously within the broad framework of the policy laid down by the government. But at present they function more like an outfit of the ministry.

There can be little debate over relocating the office of the CRS as an independent body. This office was created under the aviation ministry to give it the kind of autonomy and independence it must enjoy while investigating railway accidents and ensuring enforcement of safety norms.

That was why it was situated under the administrative control of the civil aviation ministry, many years ago in 1989 under the Railway Act.

It is time that the CRS was made a truly independent and sufficiently empowered organisation to examine railway safety issues and accidents. No purpose is served by keeping it under the civil aviation ministry.

This will leave only the overall supervision of the AAI, a State-owned enterprise, with the ministry of civil aviation. The obvious question that will arise is why the civil aviation ministry’s size should not be shrunk significantly to reflect its substantially reduced role.

Downsizing the manpower in the aviation ministry would make it leaner and more efficient. More importantly, this will make the regulatory bodies in the civil aviation sector, like the DGCA, the AERAI, the BCAS and the AAIB, truly autonomous. The aviation ministry would also be restricted from influencing these organisations beyond playing its legitimate role in policy-making.

If this major ministerial reorganisation can be achieved in the civil aviation ministry, the same template could be enforced in other central ministries.

For instance, if banks are to be privatised, the role and relevance of the department of financial services should be revisited. If such reforms do indeed take place, the real gains of privatising Air India and banks can percolate to the governance structure of central ministries.

Soon after taking charge as prime minister in 1977, Morarji Desai had told an upright and efficient banking secretary: ‘I want to abolish the banking department, but I will not abolish you.”‘Eventually, however, Desai could only convert the banking department into a division.

Almost 45 years later, another Gujarati prime minister has an opportunity of abolishing or truncating the size of a ministry or a department.

Like Desai, he may not entirely succeed in his mission. But even a partial step in that direction should yield rich dividends for the country’s governance structure.