Only 25% of Indians traveling abroad purchase travel insurance well in advance while making travel arrangements, while the majority of them wait until the last three days to buy it, according to data compiled by insurance aggregator Policybazaar.
25.08.2023 - 14:20 / skift.com / Peden Doma Bhutia / Air India
Indian carrier Vistara reported its first-ever net profit for the quarter ending December 2022, according to statement from the airline on Monday.
The full-service carrier, a joint venture of Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines, reported break even for the first time since its inception in 2015 as it crossed the $1 billion revenue mark and remained earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization positive in the current fiscal year.
In 2022, Vistara reported that it grew its international network by over 180 percent adding seven routes including three new destinations — Muscat, Jeddah and Abu Dhabi.
The airline said that it grew its domestic network by over 50 percent, by adding six new routes and two new destinations — Coimbatore and Jaipur.
While the airline did not share numbers, but for the quarter ending December 2022, it reported a 37 percent growth in capacity and a passenger increase of 47 percent compared to the same period last year.
Since July 2022, the airline has maintained its position as the second largest domestic airline in India, flying more than 11 million passengers in the calendar year 2022.
Vistara also registered a 11 percent year-on-year growth in the member base for its frequent flyer program — Club Vistara.
The airline currently operates close to 8,500 flights per month.
“With significant network and fleet expansion and sustained growth over the last few months, 2022 has been a phenomenal year for Vistara, in terms of our operational and financial performance,” Vinod Kannan, Vistara CEO, said.
Vistara is also getting ready for a merger with Air India, the erstwhile Indian state carrier, that had been acquired by Tata Sons, via its subsidiary, Talace, early last year as part of a $2.4 billion deal.
The Vistara-Air India merger is said to be completed by March 2024, following which Air India shall be India’s largest international carrier and second largest domestic carrier with a combined fleet of 218 aircraft.
Only 25% of Indians traveling abroad purchase travel insurance well in advance while making travel arrangements, while the majority of them wait until the last three days to buy it, according to data compiled by insurance aggregator Policybazaar.
Antitrust watchdog Competition Commission of India (CCI) has approved Tata group’s plan to merge its full-service carriers Air India and Vistara.
Clearly Vinod Kannan, the CEO of Vistara, may have had to field this question on the possible Vistara-Air India merger one too many times.
Tata Sons and Singapore Airlines have agreed to consolidate Air India and Vistara by March 2024.
Air India has sealed a jumbo deal for about 500 new planes worth more than $100 billion at list prices, in what could become the single largest order by any airline as it seeks to reinvent itself under its new owners, industry sources told Reuters.
The Tatas will let go of Indian full-service carrier Vistara as they look to merge the airline with the more “internationally-recognized” Air India, Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said on Monday.
India is expected to overtake Germany to become the world’s third most powerful travel and tourism market by 2032, according to World Travel and Tourism Council’s Economic Impact Research.
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.
Air India has become the latest entrant to hop on to the bandwagon of ChatGPT. Doing away with an outdated manual pricing system, the airline announced recently that it would be shifting to an algorithm-based software for setting airfares to extract more revenue from each flight. Its modern revenue management software continuously anticipates where people want to visit and how much each flyer is willing to pay, rather than the old method of having one fare for each block of seats — thereby ensuring higher revenue per flight. The airline will reportedly use GPT4 — the latest version of the revolutionary chatbot — to improve the FAQ section, pilot briefings, and more. Speaking at an event recently Air India CEO Campbell Wilson said that the use of the chatbot will not be “gimmicky”, but will be to actually enhance the airline’s functions. Last month, Air India partnered with cloud-based software company Salesforce to transform its customer experience. In another wheel of change under its new owner Tata, Air India is also testing ChatGPT to replace paper-based practices. “Frankly the system is almost so bad it’s good,” Wilson said, adding that this offered the chance to start from scratch rather than “jury-rig” existing architecture. The Tata Group is also integrating the Tata-related airlines, with the merger of Vistara with Air India and the integration of low-cost carriers Air India Express and AirAsia India. As part of its expansion plans, the Tata-owned airline last month had placed a record deal of 470 aircraft — 250 from European planemaker Airbus and 220 from U.S. aircraft manufacturer Boeing — at a list price of over $70 billion.