Etihad to commence Abu Dhabi to Jaipur flights

by Devesh Agarwal

Etihad Airways, the national airline of the United Arab Emirates, will launch a daily service from Abu Dhabi to Jaipur commencing on April 1, 2014. With Jaipur, Etihad will serve ten destinations in India Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Kozhikode, Mumbai, New Delhi and Trivandrum.

Etihad will operate the service with an Airbus A320 aircraft in a two-class configuration, 16 Pearl Business Class seats and 120 Coral Economy Class seats.

Flight EY208 will depart Abu Dhabi at 23:00 arrive Jaipur 03:45 next morning
Flight EY207 will depart Jaipur at 04:45 arrive Abu Dhabi 06:45

The schedule is targeted to carry passengers onwards to African, European and North American destinations.

Post its 24% stake purchase in Jet Airways, which was coincidentally at the same time the Indian UAE (Abu Dhabi) bilateral air services agreement increased seat allocation by 300%, Etihad has been aggressively expanding to new destinations in India, and increasing the frequency and aircraft on its existing services to the country. It has already tripled the number of seats on the prime Abu Dhabi – Mumbai and Abu Dhabi – New Delhi routes.

The gulf carrier also intends to codeshare on a wide range of Jet Airways flights operated within India, and between India and Abu Dhabi, subject to regulatory approval.

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AAI makes progress on PPP for six airports

by BA Staff

Yesterday, the Airports Authority of India (AAI) announced that it has invited the Request For Qualification (RFQ) for selection of the prospective bidders for Chennai and Lucknow Airports for conversion of these airports to a Public Private Partnership (PPP). The RFQs will remain open till mid-October, and applications are allowed from a single entity or a consortium.

As per a report from the Press Information Bureau,

The SPV shall be formed for this purpose. In order to secure representation of the Airports Authority of India on the Board of the SPV, the Concession Agreement will include a provision for issue of a golden share in accordance with a Shareholders’ Agreement that would form part of the Concession Agreement. 

The concessionaire can levy tariffs for aeronautical services including the User Development Fee (UDF) as may be determined by AERA to start with. Such charges would be revised normally once every five years by the Airports Economic Regulatory Authority (AERA) in accordance with the AREA Act. The RFP would indicate the parameters for determining charges for aeronautical services as well as the UDF 

It is expected that similar RFQs will be opened at the remaining four airports earmarked for transition to PPP (Kolkata, Jaipur, Guwhati, and Ahmedabad) soon. No applicant will be allowed to participate in the PPP at more than two of the six airports involved. 

The new PPPs will help bolster AAI's finances at a time when the authority is struggling under the weight of nearly Rs. 1,900 Crore worth of unpaid dues from several airlines. 

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IndiGo continues to expand domestic operations

by Vinay Bhaskara

As its fleet grows with the introduction of new Airbus A320s, including India’s first sharklet retrofitted A320, low cost carrier (LCC) IndiGo continues to expand its domestic services. The carrier will be adding one additional daily flight to Jaipur, Nagpur, and Kolkata from its hub in Mumbai with schedules as follow:

Mumbai – Jaipur
6E296 BOM – JAI -- 1120 – 1300 – 320 -- Daily
6E295 JAI - BOM -- 1330 – 1515 – 320 -- Daily

Mumbai – Kolkata
6E327 BOM – CCU -- 1725 – 2000 – 320 -- Daily
6E328 CCU – BOM -- 2030 – 2335 – 320 -- Daily

Mumbai – Nagpur
6E403 BOM – NAG -- 1540 – 1705 – 320 -- Daily
6E412 NAG - BOM -- 0910 – 1035 – 320 – Daily

The new flights will all begin March 20th.

IndiGo continues to saturate the routes between major Indian metros, lacking other avenues of expansion given that runways at Tier II and III Indian airports are largely unable to handle the A320, nor do those markets have the demand to support 180 seat jets.

This lends credence to the idea that IndiGo will explore new avenues of expansion in the form of a regional airline operating turboprops. Furthermore, its existing operations, especially the longer distance ones, will become more profitable as the fuel burn savings are accrued from the continuous introduction of Sharklets equipped A320 aircraft.

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SpiceJet adds flights between Delhi and Jaipur - growing guar bean industry a factor?

SpiceJet will be adding daily nonstop service between Delhi and Jaipur with schedule as follows

SG 133 --> DEL -->JAI --> D - 07:15 A -08:00 --> 737 --> Daily
SG 218 --> DEL -->JAI --> D - 20:40 A -21:15 --> 737 --> Daily

This flight will be operated in conjunction with SpiceJet's Mumbai-Jaipur services, as one aircraft will be routed Delhi-Jaipur-Mumbai (flight to Mumbai departs at 08:30), then a separate aircraft will perform the return flight, beginning in Mumbai at 18:10, arriving in Jaipur at 20:10, then departing to Delhi at 20:40.

The 30 minutes turn time seems a bit high for an airport like Jaipur, where rival low cost carriers (LCCs) routinely turn aircraft in under 20 mins (schedule wise), but this still represents smart scheduling and aircraft utilization from SpiceJet. This is good aircraft utilization because it takes a 737 which previously would have had to RON (remain over night) at Jaipur anyway, and increases utilization. The 737 will now instead RON at Delhi. I wonder however, that overnight parking rates at Jaipur have to be cheaper than in Delhi, so it will be interesting to see what kind of effect that has on the viability a marginal route like Delhi-Jaipur (because it is such a short routing, cost components like airport charges are a proportionately higher percentage of total operating costs).

SpiceJet has also tried Delhi-Jaipur numerous times in the past, so it's interesting to consider what factors would make it viable this time around. The near-collapse of Kingfisher Airlines and subsequent capacity draw-down (though it maintains a presence on Delhi-Jaipur) has to be a factor, but both Air India and Jet Airways still operate the flight. A potential factor on the demand is the rapidly exploding market for guar beans, which are used in hydraulic fracking (a method of shale oil production that has found common use in the United States). There was recently an article in the New York Times about the rise of guar bean farmers, and Jaipur is the biggest hub of guar bean manufacturing. Thus it is possible that the guar bean industry has stimulated more O&D demand in Jaipur. Whether it will be enough remains to be seen; perhaps this route would have been more viable with the Dash 8 Q400, but a combination of high utilization and inability to add more of the type due to cash restrictions could make that impossible.

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Unwilling passenger phones in hoax bomb threat to Air India

An Air India flight from Mumbai to Delhi IC611 made an emergency landing at Jaipur after the airline received a bomb threat that turned out to be a hoax.

As per NDTV, the call was traced to a passenger Mr. Manoj Bansal, who it is alleged had tele-checked in earlier at Mumbai and was allotted seat 23C. For some reason he did not want to fly the flight and wanted to cancel/change his reservation. He was informed that having being tele-checked his reservation could not be cancelled or changed. He subsequently made a bomb threat on the flight.

The flight landed at Jaipur and was thoroughly checked. Mumbai police has traced Mr. Bansal and he is now in their custody, where I am sure he will find out it would have been a lot cheaper to eat the loss on the ticket.

The flight is getting ready to depart Jaipur on to Delhi.

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SpiceJet offers new Bangalore Jaipur direct flight

SpiceJet is sure going to win the hearts of the Rajasthani community, and major businesses like Bosch India, with its new Bangalore - Jaipur direct flight.

Starting October 26, 2008, SpiceJet schedule will offer a B737 morning departure, same day evening return.

SG284 depart Bangalore 08:45 arrival Jaipur 11:30.
SG283 depart Jaipur 17:15 arrival Bangalore 20:00.

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