I’m reserving comment on the bailout of Air India till a little later when I can write a long post about it, but the big news is that the airline which taught Singapore Airlines the ropes of being a magnificent airline stays in business for the time being, on a $5.3 billion dole though to which my tax payments will generously contribute. Heck, I don’t even get miles for this generous contribution to someone else’s balancesheet ! Now, I’ve been interested in tracking the progress of the Air India 787 for a long time, and that they will get these 27 planes is now confirmed with the bailout as well. I had a good look at the planes in Hyderabad…
Air India
Tag Archives for Air India.
Air India offers 100% Bonus Miles on select domestic and international routes
As a part of the switch to the domestic schedule from 26th March onwards, Air India has made the following changes to its schedule and capacities: Added 3 new flights: Delhi – Bahrain – Delhi Visakhapatnam – Dubai – Visakhapatnam Hyderabad – Kolkata – Hyderabad In addition, services on the following routes have been increased: Delhi – Tokyo – Delhi : From 4x to 5x per week Delhi – Dammam – Delhi : From 2x per week to 7x flights Delhi – Riyadh – Delhi : From 2x per week to 3x per week Mumbai – Cochin – Mumbai : From 1x daily flight to 2x daily flights And while it was upto it, it upgraded its equipment on a…
moneylife: My new column on Air India’s 787s
This week, I wrote a column in moneylife on my views on how Air India is (not) going to make the best use of the Boeing 787 planes that are lined up for delivery to them. Check out my column here! You can look up the previous columns here! Live From A Lounge is also present on Facebook, Twitter and available via RSS.
A first look inside the Boeing 787 Dreamliner which will go to Air India
There has been a lot of talk and speculation on Air India and its fate with the Dreamliners, but looks like it is all falling into place now. Boeing made a massive publicity stint with bringing the 787 to India Aviation 2012, one painted in Air India livery and ready to be given to the airline once the certification is complete, and Air India and Boeing can settle the tussle over the compensation to be paid to AI for the delay. Yours truly was one of the few invited to have a peep inside, and I gladly took the short hop to Hyderabad to explore what AI and Boeing were cooking up together. The plane made a 14 hour flight…
Air India back in the running for *A, taking Jet Airways along?
Just a couple of days back I was flipping through the Star Alliance magazine, and was wondering where were they going with Air India because there was no mention in the magazine of AI. However, it definitely was not a closed chapter since AI definitely needs to get into an alliance (amongst other things), to be able to get more traffic on its planes and shore up its finances. Last year, *A left AI on the altar when the airline was grabbing all the wrong headlines for safety issues, financial issues and the systematic failure that it was going to become. There was also news that the Government of India did not appreciate that *A wanted a second partner in…
Air India to reduce business class on intra-India routes
Considering the speed of decision making and the soup that Air India finds itself in with every decision these days, I am not surprised it took an entire Board of Directors to come to a decision such as this one. In a meeting of the Air India board this evening, the airline has decided to fall in line with the same strategy that Jet Airways has been following for a while. Essentially, the number of business class seats will be reduced from 34 Airbus planes of the airline, which will include the A320 and A319s, which are primarily used for domestic flights in India. The number of seats is not known yet. Air India, which has managed to get its schedules…
Air India plans to launch 787 service on Delhi – Melbourne late 2012
The gloves are off and Air India finally seems to be getting into network planning mode. Maybe they now see a realistic chance of getting some Boeing 787 planes, while the controversy about who will fund this purchase goes on, and whether Boeing owes Air India a compensation of USD 1 billion. So, an Australian delegation hit up India earlier this week for trade talks, and at the end of this trip, the famed Delhi – Melbourne dreams of Air India were revived. Air India has been planning to launch this money-sucker route since 2010, and has postponed the launch dates two times already from 2010 to 2011 and now into 2012. The initial plans were supposed to make it…
Air India’s Flying Returns now has some frequent flyer benefits!
I have been a dormant Air India Flying Returns member for the longest time. Air India was my first business travel airline, since it was the preferred carrier for my employer then, and back in the days I did fly a lot on them till other airlines such as Jet Airways found their way into this monopoly. At that point of time, I was a novice in the points game, and for my life could not figure out the perks of being loyal to an airline, except for collecting miles on my frequent flyer account. With Air India, the elite perks were always not very well defined, and it was a mystery how the guy next to me got preferential…
Jet Airways follows Kingfisher Airlines and Air India downhill
Airlines in India have really been taken on the downward spiral, for their own reasons. But the common thread of going down for all of them was having to offer low fares which did not even cover the cost of fuel. Everyone in the Indian aviation market blamed Air India for the predatory pricing, where they were keeping ticket prices really low, and hence everyone else had to follow suit to be competitive.The US Dollar/Indian Rupee moving 20% in the USD’s favour did not help them either, because all of a sudden, fuel costs, unhedged for all of them most of the time, were up 20%. Jet Airways, the classiest and best Indian airline for domestic travel for long, and…
Why Air India needs a few good men (or women)
Now, all of us know that Air India, being the flag carrier and owned by the government, is run by bureaucrats. So, they have a hit and miss track record with special promotions which are not thought through to the end, and this current one is just one of them I suppose. In a promotion launched for the international markets, Air India is offering Non-resident Indians and international passport holders the offer to travel in India on AI, with a package of tickets which cost anywhere from US$ 200 + taxes (for 2 segments) to US$1000+ taxes for 9 segments in the economy segment. Taxes per segment are usually in the region of 10$ or less per segment, depending on…
Indian Carriers now bring the widebodies to the Middle East, finally!
This has been an anomaly finally getting sorted out. While I agree and it makes sense that ports such as Dubai, Riyadh and other Middle-east posts are within the flight range of a narrowbody like a 73x or a 32x series plane, but the Mid-East carriers such as Emirates have been dumping capacity (to fly forward pax to North America etc). For the longest time they flew the B777s to India, and my expectations were set high when I first booked a BOM-DXB-BOM in 2009, without bothering to check if it was a narrowbody plane or a widebody. I was thoroughly pissed with myself for not checking up the plane when I walked into the plane to realise it was…
