Air India has entered into an interline partnership with Bangkok Airways that will allow the Tata Group-owned airline’s passengers connections to 10 Southeast Asian destinations beyond the Thai capital.
25.08.2023 - 13:01 / skift.com / Delta I (I) / Campbell Wilson / Air India
Air India, under government control until 2022, has long had a problem with its interiors: Broken seats and dysfunctional in-flight entertainment topped the complaints.
When Air India was privatized, the government handed over the planes on an as-is basis. At the CAPA India Aviation Summit 2023, CEO Campbell Wilson told the audience how Air India had to resort to 3D Printing of small spare parts to keep the seats serviceable.
Now Air India is trying to fix all that.
The airline claims to have completed the refurbishment of 40% of the seats of the entire fleet (widebody and narrowbody). And it says it has restored 99% of the In-Flight Entertainment systems on its premium cabin inventory.
Air India has also decided to augment its fleet by leasing aircraft, and brought in improved interiors as a result.
In 2022, it signed a lease for five Boeing 777-200LR aircraft that had been a part of Delta’s fleet. Delta completed refurbishing its 777 fleet in 2019, even adding its Delta One business cabin, with doors. Delta decided to convert these to freighters when the pandemic struck. However, they have since been retrieved from storage, sent for maintenance and repainting in Singapore, and inducted into Air India’s fleet.
Air India is getting good reviews for the planes, some of which are already flying passengers from Mumbai and Bengaluru to the U.S.
Air India has similarly announced a lease of nine Boeing 777-300ER aircraft, which had been in service for Etihad or Singapore Airlines earlier. Overall, that’s 14 Boeing 777s that are leased and sport the cabins of other carriers but will fly for Air India.
In 2022, Air India announced it would spend $400 million on refurbishing its entire widebody fleet that it inherited during the privatization. However, details were light until last week.
The aircraft will add a premium economy cabin to these long-haul jets. Surprisingly, Air India has decided to retain the First Class Cabin in the refurbished version of its 777.
Air India did not have the lead time to design its own cabin product, so it is going with some off-the-shelf solutions for the refurbishment. A video of the new cabin walkthrough shows the latest developments. The video indicates the first- and business-class cabins will be based on a common platform, Safran’s Unity, which will also be used by Qantas on its Project Sunrise A350-1000 aircraft.
Air India’s First Class cabin onboard their refurbished 777s will have four seats in a 1-2-1 configuration. Each seat will have privacy doors, a widescreen, and an ottoman for comfort. The seat itself is fitted with ample storage options and inbuilt wireless charging.
In Business Class, Air India will replace their angled-flat offering with the same
Air India has entered into an interline partnership with Bangkok Airways that will allow the Tata Group-owned airline’s passengers connections to 10 Southeast Asian destinations beyond the Thai capital.
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The Google pages of many hotels — including premier properties — in the Himalayan hill towns of Darjeeling and Kalimpong in West Bengal have been defaced for fraud ahead of the holiday travel rush. Anybody looking for hotels in Darjeeling using the search engine will come across prominent photographs containing the hackers’ phone numbers over a section displaying pictures of rooms and amenities. “We have been lately facing incidents where fraudsters are posting their mobile numbers with payment options to book not only our properties but also several others in the region. We are continually monitoring this and flagging all such posts as ‘spam’ for Google to review and have them removed,” said Viraj Oberoi, director of Elgin Hotels & Resorts, a luxury heritage hotels chain with properties in Darjeeling, Kalimpong and Sikkim. Cyber miscreants are removing hotel details and creating their own profiles with personal contact details, said Sandipan Ghosh, general secretary of regional travel trade body Eastern Himalayas Travel and Tour Operators’ Association. “Surprisingly, they’re also luring customers to pay in advance while knocking off the goods and services tax charge,” Ghosh said. In India, the goods and services tax on hotels range anywhere between 12-18 percent, depending on the pricing. Customers, while trying to book hotels online for Darjeeling, have been duped to pay advance amounts to bank accounts which don’t belong to the owners of the accommodations. “We’re in touch with the cyber cell department to track such incidents closely and take action accordingly,” Ghosh added.
India will invest around $12 billion over the next two years in airports, aircraft and recruitment to meet the booming demand for air travel. The country aims to increase the number of airports from the present 148 to 220 by 2025, for which private builders will contribute roughly $9 billion, with the balance coming from the government-run Airports Authority of India. It entails new terminal construction, greenfield projects, and refurbishment of existing buildings, including old military airfields from the colonial era, as per a Bloomberg report. “We need to put in place the civil aviation infrastructure and capabilities that by 2047 would be able to support a $20 trillion economy within India,” said the country’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia at the ongoing CAPA India Aviation Summit in New Delhi. Scindia said passenger capacity at India’s six major airports is expected to grow to 420 million in four years from 192 million today, and Indian carriers’ fleet will grow to 2,000 aircraft in five years from 700. Additionally, India has eased leasing rules for airlines to lease more aircraft to address aircraft shortages as travel rebounds from the pandemic. He also highlighted how India had tweaked its airplane leasing program to enable airlines to add more aircraft to meet passenger demand, including more “wet leasing,” or renting of planes with crew, for domestic and international routes. Tata Group-owned Air India last month announced a record order for 470 jets and is due to take another 25 leased aircraft.
Indian companies have failed to set targets to reduce corporate travel emissions, according to an annual report by campaign group Transport & Environment. Globally, only 50 companies out of 322 have set targets to reduce business travel, with information technology (IT) services company Wipro paving the way in India. Wipro has achieved a 15-20 percent reduction in air travel emissions between the 2015 and 2020 period. Among all 10 Indian companies featured in the ranking report, only IT services provider Tech Mahindra reports on air travel emissions specifically. “Advancements taking place in India are mostly being led by the technology industry. We invite these technology companies to continue to work on their travel policies and demonstrate leadership to catalyze change in other industries,” said Denise Auclair, corporate travel manager at Transport & Environment. Of the companies that have targets, only four companies meet the “gold standard” of reporting air travel emissions and commitment to reducing them by 50 percent or more, by 2025 or sooner. These are Novo Nordisk (pharmaceuticals, Denmark), Swiss Re (finance, Switzerland), Fidelity International (finance, Britain) and ABN Amro (finance, the Netherlands).
Indian airlines are expected to record a consolidated loss of $1.6 to 1.8 billion in the financial year 2023-24 ending March 31, 2024, according to aviation consultancy CAPA India. The full-service carriers are predicted to incur a loss of $1.1-$1.2 billion. With a net induction of 132 planes next fiscal, Indian airlines are estimated to take the total fleet of all carriers to around 816 aircraft. However, more than 100 aircraft from different Indian carriers are grounded as a result of supply chain and other issues. Highlighting the potential for growth in aviation, India’s civil aviation minister Jyotiraditya Scindia said that it was time for India to look at manufacturing aerospace products. He added that the aggregate fleet size of domestic carriers is estimated to reach around 2,000 aircraft over the next five to seven years. He claims that by the end of this year, up to 15 Flying Training Organizations (FTOs) could be established, bringing the total number of such organizations to 50 from the current 35. He emphasized the expansion of the drone industry, stating that it is projected to reach a value of approximately $40 billion by 2030 and produce about 250,000 million employees. All industries have an S-shaped evolution curve, and the minister noted that India is currently in the “infancy and growth phase” of its civil aviation industry.