Panel calls for A-I listing

NEW DELHI Air-India should list itself in a stock market and reduce employees, a government-appointed committee formed to advise on the ailing national carrier’s integration with a sister airline said.

Air-India was merged in 2007 with state-run Indian Airlines, which operated mostly domestic flights, but human resource issues never allowed the merger to take off, leading to a still-ongoing massive pilots’ strike. “It is important for a PSU (public sector utility) like Air-India to formulate a Voluntary Retirement Scheme(VRS) for its employees so that excess man-power does not unduly increase the wage bill and depress productivity,” the committee, headed by former apex court judge DM Dharmadhikari, said.

The committee also recommended compensating retiring employees significantly through an employees stock option plan, for which the airline needs to value its assets within and outside the country, and decide on a stake to float in a stock market.

“This can be an attractive option for about 7,000 employees who are in the zone of retirement in the next five years,” the committee’s report, posted on civil aviation ministry’s website, said.

Indian carriers are under tremendous turbulence, reeling under a combined debt load of $20 billion, and have failed to raise fresh funds, and a struggling rupee increased already-high fuel costs even further.

India’s plans to allow foreign airlines to invest up to 49 per cent in local carriers is yet to be approved, adding to the funding crisis.

http://www.omantribune.com/index.php?page=news&id=122054&heading=Business

AI panel to execute pilot pay report

Government-owned Air India has constituted a committee to implement the recommendations of the Dharmadhikari committee report on the pay and promotion structure of its staff. The panel has representation from personnel of the erstwhile Indian Airlines, now formally a part of AI, and the erstwhile Air India.

“The whole process of fixation of pay, level mapping and seniority is expected to be completed within six to eight weeks,” went an official statement

It said the committee was constituted on the direction of the civil aviation ministry. It includes Syed Nasir Ali, director in the ministry & officer on special duty to Air India, and three general managers in the airline — A J D’Souza, S N Bhattacharya and S U Shukla.

The Dharmadhikari panel was formed to recommend ways to resolve various issues between the personnel of the erstwhile IA and AI. The report, given this January, has been formally accepted by the ministry.

It has recommended the hugely loss-making airline cap all increments till it becomes operationally profitable. It has also said there is need to rationalise allowances paid to pilots of AI and the erstwhile IA. It has recommended various cost-cutting measures in this regard, such as on allowances and accommodation when abroad. Also, on curtailing benefits such as free tickets to kin of staffers.

Pilots of the erstwhile AI, on its international routes, on strike for over a month, have said the report was prejudiced against them.

The implementation committee met on Friday to prepare a schedule. It is to interact with various associations and employees.

The ministry is approaching the Union cabinet for some dispensations required to give incentives on the basis of industry standards to certain classes of employees such as pilots, engineers and cabin crew. The incentives paid to these sections, it has been decided, go beyond the guidelines of the Department of Public Enterprises.

http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/ai-panel-to-execute-pilot-pay-report/478247/

Airbus planning to house its innovation cell in Bangalore

To source $1b worth equipment from India

Global aircraft manufacturer Airbus aims to source $1 billion worth of equipment and services from its Indian entities by 2020, said Kiran Rao, Executive Vice-President, Sales and Marketing and Customer Affairs, Airbus, on Friday. The company, which already sources software and engineering services from its facility in Bangalore, is setting up an innovation cell, which will be operational by the end of the year, Dr. Rao toldThe Hindu.

“This will not be an engineering centre, but will work with other Airbus units to develop new designs and concepts,” Dr. Rao said. “With the aviation market moving from the Western Hemisphere to the East, concepts of aircraft design should be coming from the East,” he said. “We have decided that our think tank for determining how aeroplanes should be, and how they should interact with airports and passengers and how pilots should interact with the craft would be headquartered in Bangalore and be headed by an Indian,” he said.

Airbus’ pilot training centre in Noida would be operational by 2013, Dr. Rao said. The facility would have the “capability” to train 5,000 pilots annually, but it would start operating only three simulator bays for training initially. The facility can provide initial and recurrent training, and jet orientation training.

Dr. Rao said 200 Airbus aircraft were already flying in India; 400 more were due for delivery, most of them by 2020. About 90 per cent of these would be A-320s, Dr. Rao added. Deliveries of four A-330s for Jet Airways, which were deployed on long-haul flights, would commence in October, he said.

India, Dr. Rao said, was the company’s fourth most important market, after China, the U.S. and the U.K. Indian commercial airliners were likely to purchase 1,043 aircraft over the next 20 years, he added. “Last year, we sold more than 270 aircraft to Indian airline companies, about 50 per cent of all aircraft sold by us worldwide.”

Dr. Rao attributed the problems of the Indian airlines to the high cost of fuel and user fees at Indian airports. “Delhi is, perhaps, the second most expensive airport in the world for airline companies,” he observed. “It is a fine airport, but it is not paved with gold,” he quipped.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-index/

AIR too has the right mix

All India Radio (AIR), Bangalore, in association with Vigyan Prasar, Delhi, and Karnataka Rajya Vijnana Parishat, Bangalore, will air a new, 26-episode, educative series in Kannada on chemistry, beginning June 24. It will be broadcast every Sunday at 9.30 a.m.

Giving details on the new programme, titledRasayana, AIR Station Director Chetan Naik told presspersons here Friday the new series is aimed at making science more accessible to common people and students.

Designed in the format of short plays, the programme promises to be listener-friendly and simplify science. These plays will be scripted by eminent science writers like K. V. Ghanashyam, Kollegala Sharma, M.R. Nagaraj and others.

Listeners of the programme will be posed with questions at the end of every episode and 10 people answering correctly will be awarded, he said.

Sumangala Mummigatti, science anchor, AIR Bangalore, said: “The programme focuses on the latest research in chemistry, available research options for students, as well as the everyday applications of chemistry.”

Similar series will be broadcast in 19 languages including Kannada all over the country.

In Karnataka, it will be aired simultaneously in the Bangalore, Mysore, Bhadravati, Dharwad and Gulbarga centres, she added.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-karnataka/article3561175.ece

Flight to Lanka may commence in September

The long wait of southern residents and trade bodies in the region for international connectivity to Madurai Airport, which boasts of a new Rs.130-crore integrated terminal, is about to end soon as the Sri Lankan national carrier Mihin Lanka is likely to commence operations from Colombo to Madurai in September.

Sri Lankan Civil Aviation Minister Piyankara Jayaratne assured a delegation from the Travel Club that the low cost carrier was likely to launch its operations in the coming winter season, G. Vasudevan, past president of the Travel Club, toldThe Hinduhere on Friday.

The assurance came at the end of a meeting with a Travel Club delegation led by current president B. S. G. Musthafa on Wednesday during which the members gave a detailed presentation on the market potential for Madurai-Colombo flight from the nine southern districts of Tamil Nadu.

The delegation also met the senior officials of Mihin Lanka including its Head of Operations Rohana Perera who informed them that the carrier was in the final stages of commencing operations to Madurai.

Dr. Vasudevan said that Madurai airport has already been declared as ‘Customs Ready’ by the Union Ministry of Finance way back in January 2011 itself.

“This flight service, when it materialises, will give a great economic boost to the industrially-backward southern districts of Tamil Nadu and also commercially benefit the Sri Lankan airliner. This could also be a precursor to the region getting more international flights, which are a must for industrial growth,” he said.

The delegation also met leading tour operators of Sri Lanka to promote tourism from Colombo to Madurai and vice-versa.

Travel Club also invited them to Madurai for a joint meeting of tour operators and travel agents to explore the possibility of promoting tourism between the two countries. They have accepted the invitation and dates for their visit to Madurai would be finalised soon.

http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/tp-tamilnadu/article3561375.ece