Aerospace Diary

Neelam Mathews June 30, 2014 Air Indias B-777s and crew put on standby to fly to Iraq to bring stranded Indian citizens back home, is a misplaced decision. Simultaneously, the government has released a tender on June 26 for a wet lease charter to fly to Iraq. While it is still not clear whether any response has been received to the tender   ( http://aerospacediary.blogspot.in/2014/06/breaking-air-india-wants-to-charter.html ) which we have viewed, it was clearly urgent. Questions come to the fore as to why a commercial national carrier is carrying out a role meant for the Air Force and Indian Navy. "Clearly India has no military clout and political leaders need to address this. Indian military aircraft will not be allowed in the war zone," said a former Indian Air Force official. After all, we did get the C-17s. It is clear that more needs to be done on the strategic front.” Recently a C-130J transporter of the IAF crashed. The investigation results have not been...

  Neelam Mathews June 27, 2014 Air India has floated a tender for aircraft for charter to “bring passengers from Iraq/ Kuwait to India immediately.” The carrier wants aircraft (narrow body and wide body aircraft ) on full charter for bringing approximately 15000 passengers from Iraq/ Kuwait to India. These charter flights have to be carried out under supervision by Air India.” Payment shall be made as per number of block hours of operation. So urgent is the requirement that the tender clearly states: “This is an open tender with preference to the party that can undertake immediate operations.” The word “Immediate” occurs several times in the tender.

Flying for 24 hours in Remote Split Operations (meaning the aircraft is launched by a mobile ground control station and remotely taken on charge by another ground control station located at Amendola, in Italy, and controlled via satellite link) between Italy and Afghanistan, the Italian Predator beaten the previous Air Force record by 2 hours, reports the Aviationist.