Aerospace Diary

Russia Pitches MiG-35 to India as FGFA Project Falters by  Neelam Mathews  - September 7, 2017, 7:56 AM As the contest to supply a new fighter aircraft to the Indian Air Force (IAF) heats up, the MiG-35 has emerged as a viable candidate. India is supposedly seeking about 220 single-engine fighters to replace 11 squadrons of MiG-21/27s that entered service in the 1990s. Rosoboronexport is believed to have offered a licensed production deal for the twin-engine MiG-35 that would compensate for the IAF’s reluctance to proceed with the Indo-Russian Fifth Generation Fighter Aircraft (FGFA) project. At the MAKS 2017 airshow in July, Ilya Tarasenko, director general of Russian Aircraft Corporation MiG, said: “We are actively working with the IAF in order to win the tender.” Russia has committed to a 40-year maintenance and upgrade contract to preclude the support issues that have arisen in the past with Russian aircraft in service wit...

by  Neelam Mathews  - October 18, 2016, 9:00 AM  Twenty-month-old Indian startup airline Vistara plans to adjust its strategy to fly internationally following the establishment of a new civil aviation policy in the subcontinent that allows carriers with 20 aircraft to fly abroad immediately. The previous mandate called for a minimum of five years of domestic flying with 20 aircraft. Against a background of a booming economy and India’s fast growing aviation industry, Vistara expects to launch its international operations by 2018. Talks have begun “with two airlines for partnerships [to foreign destinations],” confirmed Phee Teik Yeoh, CEO of the Tata Sons-Singapore Airlines joint venture. While it has applied for a code-share agreement with parent Singapore Airlines, Vistara has signed 12 interline agreements including those with British Airways, Finnair, Air France-KLM, ANA and JAL. Fleet addition has proved steady. “By June 2...