Airlines

Tag Archives for Airlines.

DGCA oversteps its brief, issues passenger comfort circular

The Directorate General for Civil Aviation, which is India’s aviation regulator, does not have a clue of what it can and what it can’t do. As a result, people in their office think that they can regulate anything that has the word aviation in it, or air, or something like that. They’ve tried intervening in fare sales, airline pricing and so on. However, from the “About DGCA” page on their website, updated in September 2013, their key function is listed below as: Directorate General of Civil Aviation is the regulatory body governing the safety aspects of civil aviation in India. I consider that sorted then, about the real purpose of DGCA is to take care of aviation safety and that…

Continue Reading »

India now allows gate-to-gate use of Portable Electronic Devices

For the longest time, India has had a rule, which stated that Portable Electronic Devices could not be used while planes are airborne, not even in flight-safe/airplane mode. Not that it dissuaded passengers because we thought our rules were in line with the rest of the world and hence we continued to use them anyways. Sometimes you’d run into issues with airline staff, because they wanted compliance, but it would all pan out well in the end. Until the DGCA put SpiceJet in a mess for this incident on Holi. Yesterday, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation, India’s civil aviation regulator, decided to finally update the rulebook to bring it in line with the rest of the world. the last…

Continue Reading »

Airlines cannot charge transaction fee anymore

Beginning of this week, the regulator of Indian aviation DGCA and the Federation of Indian Airlines (FIA) were slammed with a lawsuit in the Supreme Court of India, asking them to explain all the charges that are imposed on top of the base fare of the ticket, such as the transaction fee which pops up just when you are ready to enter the payment details on the credit card page, something like this: The industry and its regulator were asked to explain the extra charges, and whether these had the backing/approval of the government. For instance, even the Mumbai and Delhi airport were asked to explain the extra User Development Fee charged. Here is an excerpt from the full newsreport:…

Continue Reading »

Kingfisher Airlines pulls out of London, Bangkok, Dhaka and Kathmandu

The bad news seems to not stop rolling for Kingfisher Airlines. I previously discussed the truncated schedules uptil March 2012 for Kingfisher Airlines international operations. A couple of days back, Kingfisher Airlines was let go from the IATA interline clearing house and the billing settlement plan, thereby taking away the revenue lines from them. Via AirlineRoute.net, the new summer schedules of Kingfisher Airlines were updated on the global distribution systems. Kingfisher Airlines has discontinued operations from London, which was its only European destination. Here is a comprehensive update: London: Delhi-London Heathrow cancelled from 10th April 2012, Mumbai – London Heathrow cancelled from 16th April 2012 Bangkok: Like I wrote before, Mumbai – Bangkok and Delhi – Bangkok was already cancelled,…

Continue Reading »

The lifeline for Indian airlines is on its way

A lot of ink has been spent worrying about Indian airline companies in the past few months, with all the $ costs of their plane leases, jet fuel and other expenses going up 20% on one side for no fault of theirs, and they being forced to sell tickets on a low cost to compete with the government-owned underdog. All these blokes who fly planes in India do not have a government lifeline from my tax money as Air India does, and evidently, have been priming for a shutdown (at least speculation is such!) Everybody out there believes there is a huge market in India for aviation. If only 5.5 million passengers out of a billion+ population flew inside India in…

Continue Reading »

Do you know what a ‘Politician’ size sleeper suit is? Let me know…

This evening, I set out to recover the long lost account of my brother on Kingfisher Airlines since he never travelled with them in the past 4 years. Once we got on the website, the Update Profile section caught my eye. Usually a comprehensive portfolio review earns 500 miles so I thought, “why not?” However, this really had me in splits for a long while after… Pay attention to the drop down! So, basically, I am wondering what it feels like to have a Politician size sleeper suit. I am also wondering if the website designer for Kingfisher Airlines was playing a crude joke n his masters, or whatever happened here? Or maybe it is just me who is ignorant.…

Continue Reading »