Aerospace Diary

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 25, 2018, 10:21 AM After registering its first quarterly loss in ten consecutive years due largely to price wars, Indian budget carrier IndiGo said on Wednesday said it will neither reduce deliveries nor cut capacity in the near future as it prepares to accept more A320neos from Airbus. The carrier announced a $98 million loss in the three months ending September 30 against a background of an unsustainable level of low fares in India’s domestic market. “Aviation in India is going through pressures from excessive gasoline prices, rupee depreciation, and intense competitors, all of which have impacted our profitability this quarter,” explained  IndiGo co-founder and interim CEO Rahul Bhatia. “Regardless of this troublesome setting, IndiGo stays nicely positioned because of our value construction and robust balance sheet.” Fuel constitutes more than 40 percent of total costs in India while about 50 percent of cos...

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 23, 2018, 9:46 AM As the Asia-Pacific region experiences international air traffic growth of 8 percent per year, unease grows over the likely inability of infrastructure capacity to keep pace with fleet orders in the next two decades. The region, according to Airbus and Boeing, will receive 40 percent of the globally ordered fleet, or more than 16,000 airplanes, “equal to the U.S. and Europe together,” stressed Association of Asia Pacific Airlines (AAPA) director general Andrew Herdman at the group’s recent Assembly of Presidents on Jeju Island, South Korea. "We are gathered here in search of answers on what can we can do to effectively respond to our rapidly changing environment,” added Korean Air president Walter Cho. “The Asia-Pacific market is driving global aviation growth and is growing rapidly. We have our challenges in the aviation industry with economic fluctuations, shifting political interests, and spread o...

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 18, 2018, 11:30 AM India’s Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) awaits a visit by a Federal Aviation Administration team from the U.S. on October 31 and November 1 to review compliance of safety oversight following an audit carried out a few months ago. If the Indian regulator hasn’t addressed major oversights, it risks a downgrade to Category 2 status, similar to that issued in 2014. Such an outcome would result in a grim deceleration in growth plans of domestic carriers with ambitions to fly to the West. Recent incidents include an Air India Express Boeing 737-800 flying for four hours in a severely damaged state after clipping a perimeter wall and instrument landing system antennas at the airport in Tiruchirapalli on takeoff. Others include a case of a technician getting sucked into an engine, near midair collisions, and many bird strikes. Release of investigation reports generally takes at least a year....

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 12, 2018, 2:09 PM India's SpiceJet took delivery of its first CFM Leap-1B-powered 737 Max 8 on October 12. (Photo: Boeing) CFM International expects to meet its target for delivering 1,100 engines by the end of the year, as a once six-week schedule lag progressively dwindles thanks to what CEO Gael Meheust attributes to a strict dual-source supplier policy. “Production will be in line with the projected schedule by the end of this year,” said Meheust as he addressed reporters in New Delhi this week. “For each (engine) part, we have a dual supplier and sometimes even three…. [a reason] we have made the ramp up fast…We are on track for the next year.”  He confirmed to  AIN  that the present production rate per year would nearly double to 2000 in 2020.  Referencing a turbine disc issue in Leap-1As for the Airbus A320neo and a batch of flawed metal discovered last May in some Le...

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 10, 2018, 11:22 AM As ailing Indian airlines struggle to cope with delays at congested airports, the ministry of civil aviation hopes a recently released policy on biometric digital processing of passengers at airports will bring reprieve to carriers as passenger-clearing processes get faster. The system, dubbed “Digi Yatra” (Digital Journey), does away with the need to show a boarding pass or identification at multiple checkpoints once a traveler completes a one-time registration. The system is not mandatory. “Leveraging technology is the only solution to meet such challenging requirements,” said R.N Choubey, secretary of India’s Ministry of Civil Aviation.   The policy envisions a biometric facial recognition-led “ecosystem” for digital processing of passengers at airports such as Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) in Bengaluru, scheduled for implementation by February 2019. Jet Airways, Air Asia...

by  Neelam Mathews  -  October 4, 2018, 10:57 AM A SpiceJet Bombardier Q400 gets a water cannon welcome at India's new Pakyong Airport, near the Chinese border. India’s focus on enhancing air connectivity to hilly, remote, and underserved airports under its Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS) appeared to sharpen Thursday as budget carrier SpiceJet launched the first flight to the new greenfield Pakyong Airport in the northeastern state of Sikkim. Pakyong is India’s 100th airport and SpiceJet's ninth destination under the RCS. SpiceJet operates India’s largest regional fleet, now flying more than 20 Bombardier Q400s and holding an order for 25 more. “SpiceJet has always been a firm believer in the growth story of India’s smaller towns and cities,” said SpiceJet chairman Ajay Singh. “We have worked hard over the years to put these on the country’s aviation map.” The Pakyong airport lies about 35 miles from India’s border with China. ...

Wow Aims To Disrupt Long-haul Market from India by  Neelam Mathews  -  September 25, 2018, 10:09 AM Indian international air service will get a boost once Iceland’s Wow Air on December 6 starts flying return service with an Airbus A330neo from Delhi to Reykjavík, offering passengers from the subcontinent a connection to any of the LCC’s several existing destinations in the U.S. and Europe. Selling promotional one-way tickets starting at $200, Wow has given rise to concerns about a fare war similar to those being waged among Indian domestic carriers. Most of the airlines involved had planned to fly medium- and long-haul flights to the West this winter, but the resulting losses have raised doubts about their implementation. While low fares draw passengers, domestic airlines in India must cope with dizzying fuel prices, high taxes, rupee depreciation, and dollar escalation, making their operating costs far higher than those of international c...