Aerospace Diary

Aviation Week Daily Nov 29, 2010   By Neelam Mathews NEW DELHI On Dec. 25 India will get its first regional airline—Jagson Airlines—which will take advantage of a government break in parking and navigation fees by operating its AVRO RJ-85 with only 80 seats. The Ministry of Civil Aviation introduced its regional air transport policy in August 2007 when a worldwide recession put plans for launching regional services on hold. India introduced the policy for scheduled regional air transport services as there was a need to promote air connectivity between non-metro and remote airports within the country’s aviation network. The RJ-85 was chosen following its ability to land on short runways. “It flies at twice the speed of the present ATR-42s being run on the route by full-service and budget carriers and with no weather restrictions,” CEO Koustav Dhar told Aviation Week. To...

Aerospace Daily Nov 29, 2010   By Neelam Mathews Military maintenance, repair and overhaul provider Aeronautical Systems Inc. (ASI) says India provides vast opportunities in the long term for support solutions for U.S.-based platforms. ASI, based in Sterling, Va., provides mission-readiness services for military fleets with U.S. aircraft around the world, including Japan, Malaysia and Australia. Its specialized support for a core group of fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft encompasses component systems repair and overhaul, maintenance, aeronautical engineering, supply chain management, replacement parts and logistical support. ASI currently supports the Indian navy with repair and overhaul of six UH-3H helicopters, including three flying in operations. Though the order is small, “we believe in planting seeds, watering them and see[ing] the plants grow,” says Felipe Rod...

Aerospace Daily Nov 30, 2010 PROGRAMS Arianespace orbited two communications satellites on Nov. 26 from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. The two spacecraft were Intelsat 17, launched for international satellite operator Intelsat, and Hylas 1, for the European operator Avanti Communications. The flight marked the 54th Ariane 5 launch. Intelsat 17 is being maneuvered to its parking orbit of 68.5 deg. East longitude as a replacement for the 16-year-old Intelsat 702. Manufacturer Space Systems/Loral reports Intelsat 17’s solar arrays deployed nominally and its thrusters were fired twice to begin the maneuver into geosynchronous orbit. The spacecraft will provide video and network services across Asia, Africa, the Middle East and Europe. Intelsat 17 weighed 5,540 kg. (12,200 lb.) at launch and is fitted with a hybrid C- and Ku-band payload with a design life of 18 years. It will deliver a wide range of communication services for Europe, the Middle East, Russia and A...

Aviation Daily Nov 26, 2010   By Neelam Mathews President Obama’s visit to India has caused ripples in the civil aviation sector, with India and the U.S now expected to sign a Bilateral Aviation Safety Agreement (BASA) within the next 6-8 weeks. BASA will ensure mutual acceptance of aeronautical products and parts developed in either country, says Nasim Zaidi, who heads the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) until Dec. 1. This will mean aerospace products can be inspected and certified by DGCA and the products exported, Zaidi says. Since many U.S aeronautical products are now being designed and built in India, there is a need for international acceptance of such products. A “shadow” certification is under development with Goodrich in India for four-seat life rafts for use in general aviation aircraft. Development of the certification article is in progress and will b...

Aviation Week Nov 26, 2010   By Neelam Mathews With India’s domestic traffic set to surpass 50 million passengers for the first time this year, growth presents opportunities but also challenges – including safety – that will need to be managed, says Civil Aviation minister Praful Patel. Despite hurdles, India could be an aviation hub as it reaches the critical mass necessary to make projects economically viable, Patel said at an aviation seminar held in New Delhi. Director General of Civil Aviation Nasim Zaidi said the U.S. FAA has approved his agency to certify products. The agreement, that will permit export of products from India, will be signed in 6-8 weeks, he says. “There will be a huge demand for general aviation, helicopters … India will have an enabling policy element in terms of foreign investment,” Zaidi said. Meanwhile, there is a capacity mismatch in the India...

Aviation Daily Nov 25 , 2010 , p. 02 Neelam Mathews After years of wrangling with the Ministry of Environment and Forests, the Ministry of Civil Aviation has finally received approval for the second international airport in Mumbai. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh, Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel and Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan jointly announced the project in a hastily called news conference. The Ministry of Civil Aviation has been pushing for a second airport, saying the current international airport in Mumbai cannot be extended any farther and has nearly reached its maximum handling capacity. The congestion at the airport is forcing many carriers to look at other airports, such as New Delhi, as alternatives. Mumbai’s current airport has a single runway and will not be able to cope with the growing air traffic. The estimated $2-billion airport will be situated in Navi Mumbai, a suburb...

Aerospace Daily Nov 23, 2010 FUNDING & POLICY NEW DELHI—The Indian air force is continuously modernizing its equipment, as well as making new purchases, Defense Minister A.K. Antony tells parliament. The IAF phases out obsolete systems and upgrades and extends the life of other equipment when feasible, he says. Obsolete equipment like the MiG-23, MiG-25 and Canberra aircraft has been phased out, Antony says. Existing fighters including the MiG-27, MiG-29, Jaguar, Mirage 2000 and Su-30 MKI, as well as transport aircraft such as the An-32 and other helicopters, are being upgraded. Various fighters, transport aircraft, helicopters, radars and missile systems are also being procured in a phased manner to meet military requirements, Antony says. India is also set to sign a $2-billion deal with Dassault to upgrade 51 aging Mirage 2000 fighters to the 2000-5 standard (Aerospace Daily, Oct. 20). The agreement is expected to be signed Dec. 6 when French President Nicolas Sarkozy...

Asia-Pacific Neelam Mathews Aviation Daily Nov 19 , 2010 , p. 16     Malaysian long-haul carrier AirAsia X will launch its second European route Feb. 14, when it starts four weekly flights from Kuala Lumpur to Paris Orly International Airport ; it already serves the Kuala Lumpur-London route. The new route will be operated with Airbus A340 aircraft seating 327 passengers, including 18 in Premium class. The aircraft offers new Premium FlatBed seats. “The Paris route is a significant achievement for us ... at an affordable price. The commencement of the inaugural flight from Kuala Lumpur to Paris on Feb. 14, 2011, is our Valentine's gift for loved ones and families from the Asian region who want to celebrate the occasion in the romantic city of Paris,” CEO Azran Osman-Rani says. It is offering a promotional fare of $160 each way. 

 News AWIN First Nov 16 , 2010 Neelam Mathews  MUMBAI Air France Industries , KLM Engineering and Maintenance (AFI/KLM) and Mumbai-based Max MRO have gained a first-mover advantage in India by becoming the first to announce a joint venture for a component repair facility. The two partners did not disclose the details of the joint venture announced Nov. 16 as modalities are still being worked out. The 10,000-sq.-meter facility is expected to be set up in the tax-free zone of Nagpur, where Boeing is setting up hangars for Air India and where Max owns land, or at another location. “We are trying to develop a global network as the customer wants proximity to suppliers. Our association will empower the JV for transfer of know-how ... it’s a long road and there is no question to limit it to Airbus A320s ,” said Franck Terner, president of Air France Industries in India.  The components business at present is around $100 million, says Terner. “This figure, I believe ...

Airports Aviation Daily Nov 16 , 2010 , p. 11    Neelam Mathews Air India moved its hub operations away from Frankfurt Airport to New Delhi International Airport (DIAL), effective with the start of its winter schedule on Nov. 1, and is now the airport’s largest customer. The carrier also started shifting its domestic operations from the old domestic terminal at Delhi International to the new Terminal 3 on Nov. 11, a move that will integrate domestic and international operations under one roof. With a fleet size of 135 aircraft, Air India’s domestic network covers 63 destinations and 52 international points. The shift has not been smooth. “The preparedness has been abysmal. The only consistency Air India has shown is a lack of concern and poor communication,” said an official. The merger of Air India and Indian Airlines has not helped because of a lack of synergy. Flights are delayed as a resu...

Travel/Distribution Systems Aviation Daily Nov 16 , 2010 , p. 13 Neelam Mathews As cargo business starts to look up, Unisys Corporation is targeting India as a market for its web-based airline cargo Logistics Management System. The system is used by airlines worldwide to manage their air cargo business via a shared “software-as-a-service” model, paying on a per-shipment basis, providing savings and increased flexibility over in-house purchased systems. Unisys says it will focus on the vast opportunities that exist in cargo, baggage reconciliation and airports in India. Airline clients currently include Delta Cargo, Air Canada Cargo and SAS Cargo, and an Indian carrier will be added soon, according to Unisys. “We are also talking to five big airlines in Asia-Pacific as they need to do something quickly, not having invested for a long time (in the cargo space) since market volumes have increased,” says Sue Carter, Asia-Pacifi...

News AWIN First Nov 16 , 2010 Neelam Mathews NEW DELHI As Lotus Racing Team principal and AirAsia Chairman Tony Fernandes enjoys poking fun at Virgin Racing and Virgin Atlantic chief Richard Branson—who will dress as an AirAsia flight attendant on its inaugural charity flight from Kuala Lumpur to London after losing a bet to Fernandes—he is all business when it comes to serving Indian markets. AirAsia will increase its frequencies on the Kuala Lumpur-Chennai route through the addition of four more flights starting Jan. 21, 2011. With the additions, AirAsia will operate 11 weeklies from Chennai on a 180-seat Airbus A320 , offering a total of 114 weekly flights from India. “We have had this great bet running all season and now it’s time for Richard to start preparing himself for some hard work and the likely pain of a pair of high heels,” said Fernandes, who had told Aviation Week earlier this year that India would be his...

News AWIN First Nov 15 , 2010 Neelam Mathews mathews.neelam@gmail.com Budget airline SpiceJet ’s majority shareholder in the company Kalanithi Maran, who also is chairman and promoter of Sun Network, has formally been inducted into the Board of SpiceJet as the director and chairman, effective Nov. 15. Maran currently holds a majority 38.66% stake through his aviation firm KAL Airways that recently acquired SpiceJet. The carrier is now in “fast forward” regarding its expansion plan that includes 30 Boeing 737s and 15 Bombardier regional Q400s that were recently ordered. “SpiceJet has been outperforming ... and is now perfectly poised for a sharp take-off. I am very optimistic about the growth in the aviation business, which is the basis for the order of 30 new Boeing 737-800NG aircraft ... with deliveries commencing in 2014. This is in addition to our plans to double our current fleet size to 50 aircraft by 2013. I a...

The World Neelam Mathews Aviation Week & Space Technology Nov 15 , 2010 , p. 17 An agreement to purchase 15 Bombardier Q400 turboprops has established SpiceJet as the most aggressive among India’s budget carriers in pursuit of the country’s fast-growing regional routes. Indian aviation has been on a growth spurt for the past decade, but of the country’s estimated 400 commercial transports in service, 261 are single-aisle jets seating 100 or more passengers. Only 20 are regional aircraft of fewer than 90 passengers, so acquiring 15 of the 78-passenger Q400s has drawn attention. Deliveries are to start in the second quarter of 2011 and be completed in 12 months. Bombardier opened an office in Mumbai earlier this year. Credit: SPICEJET SpiceJet currently operates 22 aircraft, all Boeing 737-800/900ERs. During President Barack Obama’s state visit to India last week, Boeing revealed that 30 737-800s (sh...

Defense Aviation Week & Space Technology Nov 15 , 2010 , p. 46 Neelam Mathews New Delhi Obama’s visit to India stokes agreements, but not on everything Security Pact Remains U.S.-India Sticking Point The Indian air force is exploring upgrade options for U.S. military aircraft that will be handed over without key capabilities in the absence of an agreement governing those systems. The U.S. is withholding several subsystems until India ratifies the Communication Interoperability and Security Memorandum of Agreement, which governs current and future transfers of intelligence systems to India. India is not ready to commit to the security pact and instead is willing to take slightly less capable U.S. systems initially, expecting to backfill the missing features later. The strategy will be tested when the Indian air force starts taking delivery of six Lockheed Martin C-130Js next month. They are the fir...

Aviation Week Daily Nov 12, 2010 Airports Information technology specialist Sita says the challenging $190 million, 10-year contract from Air India for its hosted Horizon Passenger Services System (PSS), which stipulates setting up a single airline code for Indian Airlines and Air India, should take off by summer of 2011. The contract requires Sita to complete the integration of the two carriers' systems in 300 days to help Air India enter the Star Alliance as a full-time member. “Any PSS change for an airline is big. It’s a fundamental heart surgery. The project is complex, as it’s a three-step migration. By Jan. 31, 2011, the two carriers will have a single code. “The other objective is to integrate with 27 Star Alliance carriers. The various stages will depend on the cooperation we get from the Star carriers (to set aside their time to share their data),” says Maneesh Jaikrishna, Sita director-South Asia and India. As budgets slowly move upward from recession-hit 2009,...

Aerospace Daily-Aviation Week Nov11, 2010 FUNDING & POLICY NEW DELHI – India will release its Defense Production Policy and also introduce major changes to the delayed 2010 Defense Procurement Policy (DPP) in January 2011, Defense Minister A.K. Antony said Nov. 10. “So now we are going to take some more drastic steps to achieve our goal of speedy indigenization,” Antony said. In anticipation of the move, many international companies have formed Indian subsidiaries. Meanwhile, the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India has recommended DPP 2010 should consider a higher foreign direct investment cap of 49% to encourage foreign joint ventures. The chamber also recommended that supplies of homeland security and dual-use items, technology-based projects and some sections of civil aviation engine parts and avionics should qualify as offsets. It is likely that some of these changes will be incorporated into DPP 2010 and be announced next year. “Our aim is to ha...

Aerospace Daily-Aviation Week Nov 10, 2010 CONTRACTS NEW DELHI – The Indian air force has reached a preliminary agreement with Boeing to purchase 10 C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft. They will replace the IAF’s fleet of more than a dozen Russian Ilyushin Il-76s. The $4.1 billion deal comes in the wake of President Barack Obama’s visit to India, during which the U.S. removed some Indian laboratories from its restricted entities export list and Obama vowed to make sure “unnecessary barriers don’t stand in the way of high-tech trade between our countries.” “JVs [joint ventures] and M&As [mergers and acquisitions] are always something to look at. We acquired Narus with a huge presence in India,” says Chris Chadwick, president of Boeing Military Aircraft. “Our business is pretty strong. If you look at what’s going in the states, F/A-18 remains a rock-solid production line until the middle of the decade. The C-17 production will take us to the 2013 time frame. ...

Global Dispatches Nov 2010 Neelam Mathews New Delhi India is developing formidable satellite capabilities Printed headline: Lofting Ambitions India is becoming a power in satellite development and a significant player in the use of space for military as well as civil needs. A number of Indian-built military satellites with surveillance, imaging and navigation capabilities are planned for launch in the next few years, to both keep “a watch on the neighborhood and help guide cruise missiles” should the need emerge, says V. K. Saraswat, scientific adviser to the defense minister. “[The satellites] will have tremendous applications.” Saraswat’s statement confirms that India is becoming a space power. The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), however, refuses to comment about military satellites, saying its space program is for civilian purposes only. This position has its origins in the fact that s...

WASS Launches Subsidiary In India For Underwater Systems Nov 8, 2010   By Neelam Mathews NEW DELHI Finmeccanica is launching a subsidiary to cater to the Indian Navy’s blue-water desires. The company’s Whitehead Alenia Sistemi Subacquei (WASS) subsidiary has launched its own, first-ever subsidiary, WIN (WASS India), to offer service support, monitoring of the supply chain and to enter into industrial partnerships. “The Indian defense market is growing and we foresee only indigenous tenders in the future. We, therefore, found the need to have an Indian company,” says WIN Director Giuliano Enea. “We have identified technologies that are available in India that we need to exploit for WASS.” The company is looking at joint ventures for various domains it works with and is in talks with numerous companies, including Larsen & Toubro. Still, the cost of inve...

Aerospace Daily-Aviation Week Nov 8, 2010 FUNDING & POLICY NEW DELHI – The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO), Defense Research Development Organization (DRDO) and Bharat Dynamics Ltd. – the prime production agency for missile weaponry systems – received welcome news Nov. 8 when U.S. officials announced that many of their laboratories have been removed from a restricted-entity export list. The move was revealed during President Barack Obama’s visit here. “We welcome the decision by the U.S. to lift controls on export of high-technology items and technologies to India, and support India’s membership in multilateral export control regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group,” India Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said. “We have agreed on steps to expand our cooperation in the space, civil nuclear, defense and other high- end sectors.” Obama, in his speech to the Indian parliament, reaffirmed the removal of Indian organizations from the restricted entities list. At the...

Low-Cost carriers Aviation Daily Nov 05 , 2010 , p. 08 Neelam Mathews India’s budget carrier SpiceJet has placed an order worth $450 million at list price for 15 Bombardier Q400s, plus 15 options. Deliveries start in the second quarter of 2011, with all deliveries to be completed within 12 months, Chief Commercial Officer Sam Sridharan told AVIATION WEEK. On Nov. 2, the carrier reported a return to profit of $2.5 million for the quarter ending in September 2010, versus a loss of $22 million for the same quarter last year. “The decision to buy the Q400s has been based on the markets we are looking at where we would like to fly,” says Sridharan. The aircraft was chosen on the basis of the support in training and setting up offered by Bombardier, he added. A growing appetite among Indian carriers to serve regional routes makes the country a potentially big market for 250 regional jets with a capacity of up to 120...

MRO Asia Conference Aviation Daily Nov 03 , 2010 , p. 11 Neelam Mathews India's fledgling maintenance, repair and overhaul industry has the potential to grow exponentially in coming years, says Ravi Menon, CEO and Founder of Air Works India, the country's only third-party MRO provider. MRO work is typically outsourced to other countries while the Indian aviation industry is expanding rapidly, Menon said during a panel discussion Nov. 2 at AVIATION WEEK’s MRO Asia conference in Singapore. In addition, by 2015, India will have 125 airports, up from 92 this year, as well as 1,800 aircraft by 2025, which creates enormous scope for setting up MRO facilities, said V.V Surendran, general manager-technical services at Kingfisher Airlines. Opportunities exist in areas such as paint shops, which do not exist in India. “Less than 5% of MRO work is carried out in India. It all goes abroad,” he said. The nearly $475 million curren...

BUSINESS NEW DELHI — Saab Group signed a letter of intent last week with Mahindra Satyam and will soon form a joint venture for civil aeronautics, special IT systems, network-centric warfare and command and control systems, CEO Håkan Buskhe tells AVIATION WEEK. Mahindra Satyam is a global business and information technology services company with expertise in supply chain management, engineering and product life-cycle management and infrastructure services. Mahindra Satyam and Saab had announced earlier they would jointly address the Battlefield Management System (BMS) for the Indian army. The solution for BMS, Saab says, is field-proven and deployed in many countries. Both partners intend to work together on the Indian BMS program and explore globalization of the co-developed product. “We’re not here [just] for the Medium Multi-Role Aircraft [MMRCA] order,” Buskhe says, referring to India’s ongoing program to buy 126 new fighter aircraft. The company also is looking at bidd...