Aerospace Diary

Please credit aerospacediary Neelam Mathews Apr 29, 2016 Even as global firms battle to gain attention of India for the second line of fighters, Dirk Hoke  CEO of Airbus Defence and Space (DS) made his company's focus clear by making a visit to Delhi this week to make an offer to design, develop, manufacture and export the Advanced Medium Combat  Aircraft (AMCA).  The AMCA offer aerospacediary learns, comes with a rider: Airbus will only be associated with the project in a 50:50 joint venture since decisions tend to get overridden by Indian counterparts. Discussions are likely to get stuck if HAL insists on Airbus reimbursing it for the cost of the LCA development. In which case, Airbus is likely to demand cost of transfer of technology. Another future Make in India project sunk before floated!? Hoke took over his position from April 1 this year, and was making no bones in the aggressive role the company wants to play. Airbus is believed to have focusse...

by  Neelam Mathews  and Chris Pocock  -  April 28, 2016, 7:55 AM Lockheed Martin says that its Persistent Threat Detection Systems (PTDS) aerostats have been operationally proven over Afghanistan and Iraq. (Photo: Lockheed Martin) The Indian Air Force is considering a new purchase of radar-carrying aerostats for air and sea surveillance, especially of low-flying targets. The Indian Ministry of Defense issued a request for information ( RFI ) late last year for a batch of four, six or eight static, mobile or portable aerostat systems, and may soon make a request for proposal, which will include a 30 percent offset clause. The aerostats are likely to be employed in the western and or northern sectors of the Indian sub-continent, an Indian defense official told  AIN . Apart from the U.S., only a handful of countries operate such systems, mostly in the Middle East, although  Singapore is joining their number . The two major suppliers in th...

Neelam Mathews Apr 24, 2016 Pix-Neelam Mathews As the Indian Air Force (IAF) squadrons hit a low of around 33 against the 42 projected and India has come closer to signing 36 Rafales for its Medium Multi Role Combat Aircraft requirement, it is now looking at a second line of fighters to be produced in the country.  Given that the IAF has a varied fleet with spares inventory management getting tedious and more expensive, what happens to commonality we asked Chief Arup Raha. It is no secret that lack of commonality in aircraft models has made inventory management a grueling task for the IAF in the past. “Commonality in the IAF fleet is very important. We have too many inventories, and each aircraft requires spares., " confessed CAS to AerospaceDiary. In an exclusive, he added that "while it was best is to have lesser inventories, we have so many Su-30s. We cannot keep expanding one particular fleet (as) there are vulnerabilities and (so) we (must keep) balance....

Neelam Mathews Janes Airports Review  April 14, 2016 Delhi International Airport Ltd (DIAL) has more than tripled its solar power generating capacity at Indira Gandhi International Airport from 2.14 MWp to 7.84 MWp, with a large-scale airside installation. The latest solar photovoltaic (PV) project, costing an estimated USD6.6 million, was undertaken by  US -based ReneSola. The initial 60-module plant was completed by Canadian Solar in December 2013, as the first megawatt-level solar power plant in Asia. DIAL intends to increase solar power generating capacity at the airport to 20 MW by 2020, said CEO ....more in Janes Airports Review (subscription)

by   Neelam Mathews  April 16, 2016 Recognizing the need for a regulatory framework for operating civilian unmanned aerial systems ( UAS s), the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry ( FICCI ) has provided India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation initial guidelines that it hopes will form the basis of legislation. The final policy is expected to be released by year-end, Rajiv Nayan Choubey, India's secretary for the Ministry of Civil Aviation, confirmed to  AIN  recently. Currently, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation permits only government agencies to fly  UAS s in India. The Indian Space Research Organization has made a start to open operations to others by filing a request for proposal ( RFP ) for exploratory studies using  UAS s for remote sensing. An unidentified  U.S.  company is believed to have received a separate  RFP  from the Gas Authority of India for using  UAS s to inspect a ...

April 4, 2016 Neelam Mathews KEYWORDS  Flyover collapse Kolkata  /  IVRCL  /  Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority  /  Mohandas Pai  /  Omar Abdullah Reprints No one is certain what triggered the flyover collapse March 31 in Kolkata, India, leaving at least 25 dead and around 100 injured on March 31. But the tragedy has brought new scrutiny to India's safety standards. In 2008, the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority, the statutory planning and development authority for the Kolkata Metropolitan Area, awarded the contract to construct the 2.2-km-long flyover structure or overpass in a congested area of West Bengal state’s capital city in East India. The winning bidder for the $24.5-million project was Hyderabad-based general contractor IVRCL. Construction began in 2009 and was to be completed in 18 months. Since then, work has gone through three price escalations and missed seven completion deadlines. “The ...

To read the full article,  Client Login Airports Neelam Mathews - IHS Jane's Airport Review 05 April 2016     Air France-KLM has awarded Tata Communications a contract to provide next-generation network connectivity to 170 airports and sites in Africa, the Asia-Pacific region, and the Middle East. The contract is to be completed within 18 months. The value of the project is not known. The Tata Communications network will power Air France-KLM's mission-critical systems, including passenger check-in, flight operations, and departure control applications, and corporate programmes. Data from smart applications and wearable technologies will be integrated to improve the passenger experience. "Performance of the network is key to information," said Genius Wong, president of global network services, cloud and data centre services at Tata Communications. More in Janes Airports Review (subscription) 

Neelam Mathews, Delhi   - IHS Jane's Airport Review 04 April 2016     The Mauritius-based subsidiaries of Fairfax India Holdings Corp and Fairfax Financial Holdings Ltd will collectively acquire 33% of the equity of Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) from Bangalore Airport & Infrastructure Developers, a subsidiary of GVK Power and Infrastructure. The transaction is valued at approximately USD321 million, with completion expected by mid-2016. BIAL owns and operates the Kempegowda International in Bengaluru, the first airport in India to be built by a public-private partnership. Today, GVK Group is the largest shareholder in BIAL with a 43% stake, followed by Siemens Project Ventures (26%). Government-owned Airport Authority of India and Karnataka State Industrial Investment & Development Corp Ltd hold 13% each, while Flughafen Zurich has 5%.....Read more in Janes Airports Review 

Neelam Mathews Apr 1, 2016 NEW DELHI: A few years ago a passenger on an Indian budget carrier caused an uproar on learning that the captain was a woman. “I don’t want to die. She can’t take care of the house, how will she take care of a plane?” he  reportedly yelled . Rightfully, he was deplaned. While his knuckle-dragging tribe may have decreased trivially since then, one wonders what the passenger’s reaction would have been if he knew the captain was pregnant. One would assume he would have been scandalized that she had deigned to fly. While Qatar Airways  last year changed its draconian restrictions  on cabin crew concerning marriage and pregnancy, in India the discussion is focused on when the pilot should stop flying when pregnant. Nivedita Bhasin, the third woman pilot to join then government-owned Indian Airlines, now part of Air India, has two children, both pilots. In the last 30 years, she said, the pilot ...