Banks step up pressure on Kingfisher Airlines

Banks on Saturday stepped up pressure on beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines (KFA), stating it needed to have a capital of at least Rs 2,000 crore if it wanted to revive itself.

“The company has to bring in a minimum capital of Rs 2,000 crore. Only then can there be some possibility… (of revival),” said Pratip Chaudhuri, chairman, State Bank of India ( SBI). “Talks are on, but there has been no progress yet.” Yesterday, bankers had met the KFA management in yet another inconclusive meeting. “If the company doesn’t wish to fly, what can banks do about it?” said Chaudhuri. “Till the company brings money from its own capital, I don’t think anything can happen. The solution has to come from the company,” he said.

indicating banks won’t fund KFA till the company brings in some amount from its own funds. On taking legal recourse and realisation of assets, Chaudhuri said, “If you enforce the assets, whatever remaining hopes are there will also disappear,”

Earlier, Kingfisher had given a revival plan to the the Directorate General of Civil Aviation ( DGCA), which included a limited restart of operations with Rs 650 crore of capital which promoter Vijay Mallya had promised to bring from his own sources.

However, DGCA wasn’t impressed and had asked KFA to bring ‘No Objection Certificates’ (NOCs) from various agencies including the lenders. While KFA has reportedly got NOCs from oil companies and lessors, lenders haven’t issued one. Last year in November, Pratip Chaudhuri had asked the management to put $1 billion as capital.

KFA has been grounded since October, following a strike by its engineers over delayed payment of salaries. DGCA suspended its operating permit in the same month. Banks have an exposure of about Rs 7,500 crore to the airline which has been a non-performing asset for the last one year. SBI has the highest exposure of about Rs 1,200 crore to the airline.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/banks-steppressurekingfisher-airlines/499489/

Civil Aviation Ministry seeks Rs 3,500 cr in Budget 2013

With an urgent need to strengthen Air India and develop aviation infrastructure across the country, the Civil Aviation Ministry is understood to have sought an allocation of Rs 3,500 crore in the upcoming budget.

This would be in addition to Rs 5,000 crore due from the current year, comprising Rs 4,600 as equity infusion and Rs 400 crore as the interest to be paid on bonds worth Rs 7,400 crore issued this year to banks and financial institutions that have lent money to the national carrier, official sources said.

The government could not give Air India the entire money committed for this year and "we hope they should be able to give it next year", one of the sources said.

During the remaining part of this financial year, Air India expects the government to release Rs 2,000 crore within March 31 as part of the turnaround and restructuring plans, and announced by Finance Minister P Chidambaram in Parliament during the last Winter Session.

Air India was to get infusion of Rs 10,600 crore in the current fiscal but received only Rs 6,000 crore. Last August, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs had approved an equity infusion of Rs 1,200 crore in it.

The Ministry is also seeking Rs 200 crore for the Airports Authority of India and Rs 80 crore for the proposed National Aviation University that would impart training to pilots and air traffic controllers, apart from conducting other related courses.

As part of the turnaround plan cleared by the Cabinet, Air India is to get an equity infusion of over Rs 30,000 crore in tranches over a period of nine years starting 2012-13.

The airline has got its short-term debt of Rs 18,000 crore restructured by converting 60 per cent into long-term loans and issue the bonds with sovereign guarantee to banks and financial bodies for the remaining portion.

The national carrier's losses have mounted from Rs 5,548.26 crore in 2008-09, Rs 5,552.44 crore in 2009-10, Rs 6,865.17 crore in 2010-11 to Rs 7,853 crore in 2011-12.

However in the past few months, it has seen some positive results in terms of positive cash flow due to cost-cutting measures. 

http://businesstoday.intoday.in/story/budget-2013-civil-aviation-ministry-seeks-rs-3500-cr/1/191722.html

TSA to remove some body scanners from US airports over privacy concerns

Transportation body to do away machines that showed travellers naked after manufacturer fails to fix privacy issues

Airport scanners with their all-too revealing body images will soon be going away, the Transportation Security Administration has confirmed.

The scanners that used a low-dose X-ray will be gone by June because the company that makes them can't fix the privacy issues, the TSA said Friday. The other airport body scanners, which produce a generic outline instead of a naked image, are staying.

The government rapidly stepped up its use of body scanners after a man snuck explosives onto a flight bound for Detroit on Christmas day in 2009.

At first, both types of scanners showed travelers naked. The idea was that security workers could spot both metallic objects like guns as well as non-metallic items such as plastic explosives. The scanners also showed every other detail of the passenger's body, too.

The TSA defended the scanners, saying the images couldn't be stored and were seen only by a security worker who didn't interact with the passenger. But the scans still raised privacy concerns. Congress ordered that the scanners either produce a more generic image or be removed by June.

On Thursday Rapiscan, the maker of the X-ray, or backscatter, scanner, acknowledged that it wouldn't be able to meet the June deadline. The TSA said Friday that it ended its contract for the software with Rapiscan.

The agency's statement also said the remaining scanners will move travelers through more quickly, meaning faster lanes at the airport. Those scanners, made by L-3 Communications, used millimeter waves to make an image. The company was able to come up with software that no longer produced a naked image of a traveler's body.

The TSA will remove all 174 backscatter scanners from the 30 airports they're used in now. Another 76 are in storage. It has 669 of the millimeter wave machines it is keeping, plus options for 60 more, TSA spokesman David Castelveter said.

Not all of the machines will be replaced. Castelveter said that some airports that now have backscatter scanners will go back to having metal detectors. That's what most airports used before scanners were introduced.

The Rapiscan scanners have been on their way out for months, in slow motion.
The government hadn't bought any since 2011. It quietly removed them from seven major airports in October, including New York's LaGuardia and Kennedy airports, Chicago's O'Hare, and Los Angeles International. The TSA moved a handful of the X-ray scanners to very small airports. At the time, the agency said the switch was being made because millimeter-wave scanners moved passengers through faster.

Rapiscan parent company OSI Systems Inc. said it will help the TSA move the scanners to other government agencies. It hasn't yet been decided where they will go, said Alan Edrick, OSI's chief financial officer, in an interview.

Scanners are often used in prisons or on military bases where privacy is not a concern.

"There's quite a few agencies which will have a great deal of interest" in the scanners, Edrick said.

OSI is taking a one-time charge of $2.7m to cover the money spent trying to develop software to blur the image, and to move the machines out of airports, Edrick said.

The contract to change the software on the scanners came under scrutiny in November when the TSA delivered a "show cause" letter to the company looking into allegations that it falsified test data, which the company denied. 
On Thursday it said final resolution of that issue needs approval by the Department of Homeland Security.

The agreement with the TSA is an indication that OSI Systems will be cleared of the issues raised by the agency, Roth Capital Partners analyst Jeff Martin wrote on Friday. OSI shares soared $2.37, or 3.5%, to close at $70.02.

Besides the scanners being dropped by TSA, Hawthorne, California-based OSI Systems makes other passenger scanners used in other countries, as well as luggage scanners and medical scanners.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/19/tsa-revealing-body-scanners-removed

Aviation technology advances; FAA tries to keep up

DALLAS (AP) — The battery that caught fire in the Japan Airlines 787 Dreamliner in Boston was not overcharged, but government investigators said Sunday there could still be problems with wiring or other charging components.

An examination of the flight data recorder indicated that the battery didn’t exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts, the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement.

But NTSB investigators are continuing to look at the battery system. They plan to meet Tuesday with officials from Securaplane Technologies Inc., manufacturer of the charger for the 787’s lithium ion batteries, at the company’s headquarters in Tucson, Ariz., said Kelly Nantel, a spokeswoman for the board.

“Potentially there could be some other charging issue,” Ms. Nantel said. “We’re not prepared to say there was no charging issue.”

Even though it appears the voltage limit wasn’t exceeded in the case of the battery that caught fire on the 787 in Boston, it’s possible that the battery failures may be due to a charging problem, according to John Goglia, a former NTSB board member and aviation safety expert.

Too much current flowing too fast into a battery can overwhelm the battery, causing it to short-circuit and overheat even if the battery’s voltage remains within its design limit, he said.

“The battery is like a big sponge,” Mr. Goglia said. “You can feed it with an eye dropper or you can feed it with a garden hose. If allowed, it will soak up everything it can from the garden hose until it destroys itself.”

There are so many redundancies and safeguards in aviation that when an accident or mishap occurs, it almost always is the result of a chain of events rather than a single failure, he said.

The batteries in two incidents “had a thermal overrun because they short-circuited,” he said. “The question is whether it was a manufacturing flaw in the battery or whether it was induced by battery charging.”

The unfolding saga of Boeing’s highest-profile plane has raised new questions about federal oversight of aircraft makers and airlines. After the two separate and serious battery problems, it wasn’t U.S. authorities who acted first to ground the plane — it was Japanese airlines.

Some aviation experts question the ability of the Federal Aviation Administration to keep up with changes in the way planes are being made today — both the technological advances and the use of multiple suppliers from around the globe. Others question whether regulators are too cozy with aircraft manufacturers.

Even as they announced a broad review of the 787 earlier this month, top U.S. transportation regulators stood side by side with a Boeing executive and declared the plane safe — saying that they would gladly fly in one. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood repeated his endorsement Wednesday.

A few hours later, the FAA issued an emergency order grounding the planes.

Despite their concerns, many safety experts still believe that the current regulatory process works. The 787s were grounded before any accidents occurred.

The Dreamliner is the first airliner whose structure is made mostly from composite materials rather than aluminum. The plane relies more than previous airliners on electrical systems rather than hydraulic or mechanical ones, and it’s the first airliner to make extensive use of lithium-ion batteries to power cabin pressurization and other key functions.

Such technological advances may force the FAA to re-examine the way it does its job.

“We’ve gone from aviation to aerospace products that are much more complex,” said Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst with the Teal Group. “The FAA is equipped for aviation. Aerospace is another matter.”

Former NTSB member Kitty Higgins said the FAA must consider whether changes in its certification process would have turned up the problems in the Dreamliner battery systems.

“They need to make sure the certification process stays current with the industry and the new technology,” she said.

An FAA spokeswoman declined to comment for this article, referring instead to statements made during a news conference last week. Officials said then that the review of the 787 wouldn’t be limited to the Dreamliner’s batteries. FAA Administrator Michael Huerta said that the agency would “make sure that the approved quality control procedures are in place and that all of the necessary oversight is done.”

The FAA has said that its technical experts logged 200,000 hours testing and reviewing the plane’s design before certifying the plane in August 2011. Boeing defended the process and the plane.

“We are confident in the regulatory process that has been applied to the 787 since its design inception,” said Boeing Co. spokesman Marc Birtel. “With this airplane, the FAA conducted its most robust certification process ever.”

A week ago, the FAA’s Mr. Huerta and Transportation Secretary LaHood endorsed the Dreamliner’s safety even as they ordered a new review of its design and construction following a fire in a lithium-ion battery on a 787 that had landed in Boston. Then, this past Wednesday, after a battery malfunction on a second plane resulted in an emergency landing, they grounded Dreamliner flights in the U.S.

In certifying new planes, the FAA relies heavily on information from the manufacturers. That system has worked — the U.S. commercial airline fleet is safer than ever — but it is coming under renewed scrutiny after the 787 incidents.

Experts say that FAA officials have no choice but to rely on information from aircraft manufacturers as key systems of the plane are designed and built.

“As a practical matter, they can’t do the testing,” said longtime aviation consultant Daniel Kasper of Compass Lexecon. “They don’t have the expertise in aircraft design, and they don’t have the budget — it would be too costly. They would have to be involved in every step.”

Thomas Anthony, director of the aviation-safety program at the University of Southern California, said that many new planes have flaws that are only discovered once they go into service and that the regulatory process worked the way it was supposed to with the Dreamliner.

“The FAA used to be accused of ‘blood priority’” — acting only after a disaster, Mr. Anthony said. “In this case, it’s not true. The regulators are taking their job seriously. There were no accidents; there were no injuries; there were no fatalities.”

That has not always been the case. In 1979, authorities grounded the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 for five weeks after an engine tore loose from the wing of an American Airlines plane, causing a crash that killed 273 in Chicago. And there were other incidents that occurred after the DC-10 was introduced in 1971, including cargo-door problems that forced one emergency landing and caused a Turkish Airlines crash that killed 346 in 1974.

Boeing, based in Chicago, is racing to find a fix to the Dreamliner’s battery systems and get the planes back in the air. It is still producing 787s but has stopped delivering them to customers.

Bloomberg News reported that Boeing has tried to persuade the FAA to end the groundings by proposing a variety of inspections and having pilots monitor electronic signals from the batteries to prevent fires. The FAA has been reluctant to approve those steps without a clear idea of what caused the defects and how they can be prevented.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/jan/20/aviation-technology-advances-faa-tries-keep/?page=3

Boeing halts delivery of Dreamliners after incidents

The American aerospace giant Boeing halted deliveries of its 787 Dreamliner on Friday but said it would continue to build the aircraft while safety experts examine its battery and electrical systems.

The announcement capped a week in which all 50 787s in service around the world were grounded on orders from multiple aviation authorities to investigate the cause of two incidents, including a fire, linked to its batteries.

"We will not deliver 787s until the FAA approves a means of compliance with their recent Airworthiness Directive concerning batteries and the approved approach has been implemented," a Boeing spokesman said.

"Production of 787s continues," he said.

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Dreamliners had been flying in Chile, Ethiopia, India, Japan, Poland, Qatar and the United States until their flights were stopped after a global alert issued by the US Federal Aviation Administration.

Boeing's chairman and chief executive Jim McNerney in a statement to employees defended his company and the aircraft against "the negative news attention over the past several days."

"As everyone inside the company knows, nothing is more important to us than the safety of the passengers, pilots and crew members who fly aboard Boeing commercial and military aircraft," he said.

"We have high confidence in the safety of the 787 and stand squarely behind its integrity as the newest addition to our product family."

His comments came as US and Japanese experts began examining an All Nippon Airways 787 forced to make an emergency landing at Takamatsu in southwest Japan on Wednesday because of a smoke alert apparently linked to a lithium-ion battery, the plane's main electrical power unit.

However, reports today said the fire was not caused by an overcharged battery.

The risk of fire from overheating powerpacks emerged as a major concern for Boeing's cutting-edge new planes after pilots were forced to land a domestic Japanese flight due to smoke apparently linked to the lithium-ion battery.

But the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said its examination so far has shown the battery was not the culprit of an earlier January 7 fire on an empty Japan Airlines plane in Boston.

''Examination of the flight recorder data from the JAL B-787 airplane indicate that the APU battery did not exceed its designed voltage of 32 volts,'' a statement said.

The physical examination of the battery, including X-rays and scans of the assembled battery and of its disassembled components, was still ongoing, the agency said.

The NTSB said representatives from its Japanese and French counterparts were participating in the investigation, and noted it had sent its own investigator to Japan for the investigation of the incident there.

No airline has cancelled purchases for the 787, but with 850 of the ambitious $US200 million-plus ($A190 million) aircraft on order, a fortune is at stake.

The problems have cast a cloud over the aircraft heavily dependent on pioneering electrical systems and lightweight composite materials that is meant to be Boeing's future.

No airline has canceled purchases for the 787, but with 850 of the ambitious $US200 million-plus ($A190 million) aircraft on order, a fortune is at stake.

McNerney stressed that since they entered service in October 2011, 787s have completed 18,000 flights and 50,000 flight hours with no serious problems.

But US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood told NBC television that the 787 would have to prove itself again to US inspectors.

"Those planes won't fly until we're 1,000 percent sure they are safe to fly," said LaHood on Friday.

The focus of investigators was on batteries supplied to Boeing by Japan's GS Yuasa through France's Thales, two of many firms in a complex global chain of suppliers for the 787 program.

Loren Thompson, an aviation analyst at the Lexington Institute, said Boeing was under heavy pressure "to find a solution as soon as possible," or else it will stop receiving payments for the aircraft on order.

"It's a question of weeks, not months," he said.

Boeing's engineers union, representing 23,000 staff, raised the stakes in the case on Friday as its representatives rejected the company's "final" contract offer and blamed the 787 problems on the manufacturer's outsourcing strategy.

The union members will likely vote next week on whether they agree to reject the contract offer, and that ballot could include a vote on whether to go on strike.

"Boeing corporate created the 787 problems by ignoring the warnings of the Boeing technical community," said Joel Funfar, one of the union negotiators.

"Now, they propose to double down on their failed outsourcing strategy by outsourcing the engineering work required to solve the problems caused by previous rounds of outsourcing."

http://www.theage.com.au/travel/travel-incidents/boeing-halts-delivery-of-dreamliners-after-incidents-20130121-2d1xl.html

Mamata seeks more airports in West Bengal

Stating that West Bengal is emerging as a growing destination for investment and industry, Chief Minster Mamata Banerjee urged the Airport Authority of India (AAI) to allow more flights to operate from Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International Airport (NSCBI) in the city and set up more airports in different parts of the State.

Ms Banerjee, who was participating in an event to inaugurate the new integrated terminal at the airport, urged the AAI to allow night landing facility at the Bagdogra Airport in north Bengal.

“More airports should be set up at other places like Cooch Behar where government has plans to invest Rs 25 crore… We want places like Balurghat, Malda, Sunderbans, Digha to have an airport or a helicopter facility,” Ms Banerjee said.

During the event K N Srivastava, secretary, Ministry of Civil Aviation raised the issue of poor drainage facilities resulting in the flooding of the NSCBI airport.

“I discussed the issue with Saugata Da (Saugata Roy MP). It is a small matter and we will do the necessary work from the funds allotted from the JNURM scheme,” she said.

Ms Banerjee said that her government is willing to extend all cooperation to the operation for the new terminal and demanded that the Centre should extend its full cooperation to Bengal as it is going to be the destination of the world.

 Speaking at the event, Union Minister of Civil Aviation Ajit Singh said the new integrated terminal has a capacity of handling 16 million domestic passengers and four million international passengers annually.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/mamata-seeks-more-airports-in-west-bengal/article4327726.ece

Sikkim airport may go on stream by 2014-end

Kolkata, Jan. 20:  

By the end of 2014, flying to the Himalayan State of Sikkim will be a reality.

The upcoming Sikkim airport is likely to be operational by then , a senior Airports Authority of India official said.

The Rs 310-crore project is being developed by Punj Lloyd at Pakyong, 30 km south of Gangtok and located in the eastern part of the State. The airport will be spread over 197.72 hectares . “Construction work is on for the last two years. We expect the airport to be operational by the end of 2014,” the official told Business Line.

According to him, the project has been “quite challenging” as it requires construction of slopes in a hilly terrain. The difficult topography and hostile weather also restrict work to only 125 days in a year, he added.  Located at an altitude of 4,700 ft and flanked by deep valleys on both ends of the runway, the airport would rank one among the five highest airports in India, according to Punj Lloyd.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-others/tp-states/sikkim-airport-may-go-on-stream-by-2014end/article4326734.ece

Aviation industry: Buffeted by ground realities

Indian aviation, the ninth largest market in the world, has significantly contributed to business, trade and tourism growth in the past decade.

The paradox of the sector, which serves one of the world’s fastest growing economies and registered unprecedented growth in traffic, is that almost all Indian carriers are in the red.

Transportation is one of the most important wheels of growth in any economy, and air travel is no longer an elitist luxury but a necessity. The sector has been impacted by several factors including high operating costs fuelled by high oil and tax cost, cash crunch and soaring debts.

Recently, the Government opened up FDI in Indian carriers to foreign airlines and also allowed direct import of aviation turbine fuel (ATF).

Responding to this, R. Neelakantan, Chief Financial Officer, SpiceJet said, “Permitting FDI by foreign airlines was a right step for Indian aviation, as it requires resources for expansion to connect Tier II and III cities with metros and foreign destinations. Further, the Government has been proactive in helping the industry directly import the required ATF.”

He added that FDI would lead to an increase in the fleet strength of several airlines.

However, these moves may not be enough to address the fundamental problems facing the industry.

High ATF prices

The saving of sales tax on import of ATF is an attractive proposition for airlines. However, they have to use the existing infrastructure of the oil marketing companies (OMC). As India is an ATF-surplus country, direct import by airlines would necessitate finding new export markets for the OMC’s surplus stock.

Direct import merely involves remodelling the transaction to overcome high sales tax (20-23 per cent) as the user and logistic services provider remain unchanged, and, therefore, there may be no real benefit to the economy. A more practical way out could be to categorise ATF as “declared goods” to curb tax cost and ensure a uniform rate across States.

“ATF pricing mechanism is based on import parity with a black box which currently includes irrational elements and tax on taxes. If a person travels by road or rail, he is using highly subsidised infrastructure or subsidised electricity/ diesel, thereby making a much larger hole in the exchequer. We are only requesting rationalisation of taxes,” says G.P. Gupta, Chief Administrative Officer, SpiceJet.

Heavy tax burden

According to Gupta, “A major portion of aviation losses is attributable to high taxation.” It is not just the tax, but also the tax on tax which becomes excruciating! For example, several airport operators charge fuel throughput fees from the OMCs. This throughput charge plus service tax forms part of the ATF cost on which sales tax is charged by OMCs, leading to a cascading tax effect.

Passenger Service Fee and User Development Fee, collected on behalf of the Airports Authority of India, suffer service tax thereby pushing up ticket cost, which has outpaced the spending power of customers.

Airlines depend heavily on foreign service providers; the contracts for these are net of taxes. As the Revenue department is stringent on withholding tax, whether it is coverage of income deemed to accrue in India or withholding at 20 per cent in the absence of PAN, the costs are mounting for carriers.

Tax incentives

Maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) form another big cost item for an airline, accentuated by the fact that MRO facilities are in their infancy in India. According to Neelakantan, “an MRO operating out of India will definitely save costs and time, apart from the outflow of valuable foreign exchange. Adequate direct and indirect tax concessions for setting up MROs will be a step in the right direction.”

Liberalisation of ECB

Unless the fundamentals of the sector are improved, carriers will face the same problems in raising debt outside India that they face domestically. “Allowing ECB (external commercial borrowings) for use of working capital has not been of much benefit for the airline industry. The collaterals to raise the required funds as well as the weakening Indian rupee did not make it particularly appealing to the industry,” says Neelakantan

The sector looks toward the Government for tax rationalisation, which most of them believe would be enough for them to soar again, and fuel the growth of the world’s most promising economy

Shweta Mathur and Manika Girotra, Walker Chandiok & Co, contributed to the article.

---

More than just direct import, aviation turbine fuel should be categorised "declared goods" to curb tax costs and ensure uniform rates across States.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-others/tp-taxation/aviation-industry-buffeted-by-ground-realities/article4326713.ece

Grounded Boeing Dreamliner hopes to fly into clear skies soon

It was certainly not the way the US-based Boeing, manufacturer of the Dreamliner Boeing-787 aircraft, wanted publicity. Neither did Air India, the only Indian airline flying the newest generation of civilian aircraft. For Boeing, the Dreamliner is its answer to rival Airbus’s A-380, the largest civilian aircraft in operation. And for Air India, the induction of six Boeing-787s in its fleet last year is part of its turnaround strategy and eventual survival. So, these stakeholders could have well done without any glitches.

But that is what happened last week when a series of incidents saw 50 of the Boeing-787 aircraft being grounded globally because of safety reasons. The two Japanese carriers — All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines — were the first to ground their entire fleet on Wednesday. The move literally led to a tsunami. Within hours, US aviation watchdog Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued an airworthiness directive to address a potential battery fire risk in the 787 and required all operators to temporarily cease operations.

Batter(y)ed?

Following the FAA’s directive, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) “advised” Air India to ground its entire fleet of six Boeing-787 aircraft.

The latest problem that led to the grounding of the 787 fleet involved a lithium ion battery. “The battery failures resulted in release of flammable electrolytes, heat damage, and smoke on two Model 787 airplanes. The root cause of these failures is currently under investigation. These conditions, if not corrected, could result in damage to critical systems and structures, and the potential for fire in the electrical compartment,” FAA said in a statement.

While all these groundings were extensively covered by the media across the globe, aviation analysts are not too perturbed by what happened on board the Boeing-787 or the aircraft being grounded.

“The grounding of the B-787 will be short-term. Boeing has been in the business of aircraft manufacturing for a very long time. They will come out with a solution in two to three weeks time,” said Sharan Lillaney, aviation analyst, Angel Broking. The issue with the Dreamliner was faced by just a couple of airlines the world over, which had the batteries manufactured in Japan, he added.

Others cite what happened to the Airbus A-380, an aircraft which can carry over 500 passengers on a single flight, when it was first launched commercially in early 2000. That aircraft too faced some teething problems and, in fact, India, which does not allow international airlines to operate regular A-380 flights in the country, had to allow the aircraft to make emergency landings more than once at Hyderabad airport. The only difference was that unlike the Dreamliner, the A-380 fleet was not grounded.

Frequent fliers say there are teething problems with just about every new aircraft. “The 787 was a big technological leap for Boeing and they will be working to rectify it soon,” said Peeyush Naidu, aviation analyst, Deloitte.

Why all the noise?

When the two aircraft manufacturers are not squabbling with each other, both admit that any new aircraft entering service is likely to face problems. Introducing a new aircraft is very similar to introducing a new car or any other product in the market. Though all manufacturers try and come up with a foolproof product, sometimes problems do crop up. And this is true even of the new generation aircraft. But this does not mean that the aircraft manufacturers don’t try to come up with a near-perfect product before it is put in service. Hence, the global induction of the Boeing-787 was delayed by about three years as the manufacture and vendors worked to iron out problems that kept coming up before certification for flight was possible. There was a similar delay in the global induction of the Airbus A-380.

“We want to see the Boeing 787 back in the air and wish our colleagues in Boeing a fast recovery to flight. Both Airbus and Boeing have an excellent safety record and safety is our number one priority in the industry,” said Kiran Rao, Executive Vice-President, Marketing, Airbus.

Analysts maintain that though a short-term solution will be found to rectify the problem with the batteries and the Boeing-787 will take to the skies again soon, finding a permanent solution to the problem may take months.

However, there is good news for Air India in particular as analysts say that the grounding of its newest aircraft will have no adverse impact on its image. “Air India will manage the crisis without any major losses in sales,” Lillaney says as most travellers are unaware of what model of plane they are flying on. “Also, when you book a flight ticket, you do not know which type of aircraft you will be taking. So, public perception about Air India will not be affected,” he added.

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-logistics/grounded-boeing-dreamliner-hopes-to-fly-into-clear-skies-soon/article4326719.ece

New terminal at Kolkata airport holds promise for airlines: Pranab

Kolkata, Jan. 20:  

President Pranab Mukherjee, on Sunday, said the airlines should be encouraged to use the modernised terminal of Kolkata airport as it is the gateway to the East.

Inaugurating the new integrated terminal of Netaji Subhash Chadra Bose International Airport, Mukherjee said the modernised facility would also be useful as Kolkata would be an important place in terms of the ‘Look East’ policy of the government.

With a capacity to handle 20 million passengers annually, the Rs 2,300-crore terminal has been developed by the joint venture of ITD Cementation India Ltd and its parent company Italian-Thai Development Public Co. Ltd, Thailand (ITD). The first flight from the facility will be a Kolkata-New Delhi-New York flight on January 23. The full-fledged operations will, however, begin from March-end. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee requested the Airports Authority of India to begin domestic operations in the next 15 days.

The modern facility will have 48 international and 80 domestic check-in counters, 38 immigration counters, 23 international and 33 domestic security gates and 18 aerobridges.

V.P. Agrawal, Chairman, Airports Authority of India, said: “More than 4,000 workers worked day and night for the new building at a frantic pace to finish the magnificent glass and steel structure spread over 1,89,815 square metres at the cost of Rs 2,325 crore.”

http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/todays-paper/tp-corporate/new-terminal-at-kolkata-airport-holds-promise-for-airlines-pranab/article4326661.ece