Investigators may spend as long as two weeks analyzing data before they can say what caused India’s deadliest air disaster in 14 years.
The fire-damaged cockpit voice recorder recovered from the hillside crash site yesterday should yield the necessary clues, the government said in a statement. The aviation regulator will seek to determine how a 2-1/2 year old Air India Express Boeing Co. 737-800 flown by experienced pilots overshot the runway and burst into flames, killing 158 passengers and crew.
Air travel has doubled in the past six years as rising disposable incomes in the world’s second-fastest growing major economy encourage people to shun trains and take a plane for long-distance journeys. The government plans to spend as much as $2.6 billion on modernizing the nation’s airports and aviation infrastructure, including 35 facilities in smaller cities.
“Before clearing aircraft orders, we need to think whether we have the infrastructure,” said A. Ranganathan, a Chennai, south India-based aviation consultant and a former commercial pilot. “Proper planning is required for infrastructure development.”
India needs 1,030 aircraft worth $138 billion over the next 20 years, and will be the fastest-growing air travel market for the next decade, Airbus SAS, the world’s largest planemaker, said in March. Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel said the same month that India needs to more than quadruple the number of airports from the current 90 to meet the increased traffic.
Traffic Jumps
Domestic air traffic in India jumped to more than 35 million passengers in the year ended in March 2009 from less than 15 million six years ago, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. Seven carriers operate 11 different brands in India, compared with four airlines in 2003, it said.
“When you have such high levels of growth, it creates enormous stress on the system,” said Peter Harbison, chairman of the industry consultancy. “It is going to be a big issue for India because the traffic potential is so vast.”
India’s airports reported as many as 70 “near misses” in the last three years, according to minister Patel. The reasons include “co-ordination failures” and stress and fatigue due to heavy traffic, he told Parliament in March.
Flight IX-812 from Dubai to Mangalore crashed at about 6:05 a.m. on May 22. All the bodies of the dead have been removed from the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800, Harpreet Singh, Air India’s emergency response coordinator, said yesterday in Mumbai. Of those, 87 have been identified. There were eight survivors.
Investigators from India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation are leading the probe into the crash.
Refinance Loans
National Aviation Co. of India Ltd., Air India’s owner, is seeking to raise as much as $1.15 billion to refinance loans that funded the purchase of 21 Airbus SAS planes.
The accident was the worst in India in 14 years, according to the Aviation Safety Network website. Houston, Texas-based disaster management company Kenyon International Emergency Services has been asked to assist in the rescue operation, Air India’s Singh said. The airline will also conduct an internal inquiry. The airline and India’s aviation regulator have declined to comment on what may have caused the accident.
Since India’s last major air disaster in 2000, Kingfisher Airlines Ltd., SpiceJet Ltd., IndiGo, GoAirlines (India) Pvt. and Paramount Airways Ltd. have started services, as the world’s fastest expanding major economy after China saw demand surge.
Technical Assistance
Boeing is sending a team to provide technical assistance to the investigation at the invitation of Indian authorities, the Chicago-based manufacturer said in a statement. Air India said the crashed 737 was about 2 1/2 years old.
Both pilots were experienced and had flown into Mangalore together on May 17, Air India’s director for personnel, Anup Srivastava, told reporters in Mumbai May 22. The civil aviation ministry said in a statement the plane had landed “slightly beyond” the runway’s “touchdown” zone at a time when visibility was about six kilometers (four miles).
Both the pilots were “well rested” before the flight, Air India Chairman and Managing Director Arvind Jadhav said yesterday in Mangalore.
The crash on May 22 was the worst in India since a Saudi Arabian Airlines flight collided with a Kazakhstan Airlines jet in November, 1996, killing all 349 on board.
In the South Asian country’s last major air disaster, a Boeing 737-200 crashed into a residential area while approaching Patna airport in the eastern Bihar in July 2000.
International air travel has rebounded from last year’s slump as the global economy expanded. Indian airlines carried 16.82 million passengers between January and April this year, 22 percent more than a year earlier, according to the Civil Aviation Ministry.
Source: Business Week
Monday, May 24, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
SpiceJet gets nod to fly to 3 foreign destinations
Indian discount carrier SpiceJet Ltd has been cleared to fly overseas in June, starting with Dhaka, Kathmandu and the Maldives, after the airline completes five years of domestic service later this month.
The aviation ministry has, however, turned down its request to start flights to Sri Lanka for now, said two officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Gurgaon-based low-cost airline had shortlisted four overseas destinations for the first phase of its international operations, Mint reported on 18 January. The government requires that airlines complete a minimum five years of service before being eligible to fly abroad.
One of the civil aviation ministry officials cited above said the carrier has been granted rights for daily flights to Dhaka and Kathmandu starting 1 June. The Mumbai-Maldives service will start in the winter, he said.
SpiceJet, with a 12.6% domestic market share and 19 aircraft, plans to confine flights to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) region only, CEO Sanjay Aggarwal had said in January.
It is not clear when the carrier will actually launch the operations. Aggarwal could not be reached for comments and an email sent to him remained unanswered.
While “in-principle” approval has been granted, it has yet to be issued in “black and white”, said a SpiceJet official who did not want to be named as he is not authorized to speak with the media.
It may take the airline all of June to prepare for international operations, depending on clearances from aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
The country’s carriers that fly overseas are Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and JetLite, making SpiceJet the fifth to do so.
It will also be the first domestic budget airline to fly abroad, pitting it against regional carriers such as FlyDubai, AirAsia and Air Arabia among others.
The airline’s ability to profit from overseas services will depend on how it operates the low-cost model, an analyst said.
“Every service comes at a price and not everybody wants all the services,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, analyst at Mumbai’s Fortune Equity Brokers India Ltd, referring to competition from full-service carriers. Apart from picking less-crowded time slots, “the challenges could be on the operational side in their ability to turn around the aircraft for other operations,” he said.
Given that the airline is not entering mature markets, it may not have to contend with the difficulties that carriers such as Jet and Kingfisher faced when they started long-haul European and US operations in the past four years.
“What happened with Kingfisher or Jet was that they went into mature markets which are difficult to make profits in,” Sabarad said. “I tend to believe if they use the same set of aircraft and work them around, then they are essentially utilizing their fleet more efficiently so it would mean for the same fixed cost all they need is the variable expense of flight, primarily fuel. If they are able to attract passengers with cheaper fares that cover their variables they should be adding to the profits.”
Source: Livemint
The aviation ministry has, however, turned down its request to start flights to Sri Lanka for now, said two officials with knowledge of the matter.
The Gurgaon-based low-cost airline had shortlisted four overseas destinations for the first phase of its international operations, Mint reported on 18 January. The government requires that airlines complete a minimum five years of service before being eligible to fly abroad.
One of the civil aviation ministry officials cited above said the carrier has been granted rights for daily flights to Dhaka and Kathmandu starting 1 June. The Mumbai-Maldives service will start in the winter, he said.
SpiceJet, with a 12.6% domestic market share and 19 aircraft, plans to confine flights to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) region only, CEO Sanjay Aggarwal had said in January.
It is not clear when the carrier will actually launch the operations. Aggarwal could not be reached for comments and an email sent to him remained unanswered.
While “in-principle” approval has been granted, it has yet to be issued in “black and white”, said a SpiceJet official who did not want to be named as he is not authorized to speak with the media.
It may take the airline all of June to prepare for international operations, depending on clearances from aviation regulator, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation.
The country’s carriers that fly overseas are Air India, Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines and JetLite, making SpiceJet the fifth to do so.
It will also be the first domestic budget airline to fly abroad, pitting it against regional carriers such as FlyDubai, AirAsia and Air Arabia among others.
The airline’s ability to profit from overseas services will depend on how it operates the low-cost model, an analyst said.
“Every service comes at a price and not everybody wants all the services,” said Mahantesh Sabarad, analyst at Mumbai’s Fortune Equity Brokers India Ltd, referring to competition from full-service carriers. Apart from picking less-crowded time slots, “the challenges could be on the operational side in their ability to turn around the aircraft for other operations,” he said.
Given that the airline is not entering mature markets, it may not have to contend with the difficulties that carriers such as Jet and Kingfisher faced when they started long-haul European and US operations in the past four years.
“What happened with Kingfisher or Jet was that they went into mature markets which are difficult to make profits in,” Sabarad said. “I tend to believe if they use the same set of aircraft and work them around, then they are essentially utilizing their fleet more efficiently so it would mean for the same fixed cost all they need is the variable expense of flight, primarily fuel. If they are able to attract passengers with cheaper fares that cover their variables they should be adding to the profits.”
Source: Livemint
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