Etihad to make Bangalore a daily flight from Summer 2011 schedule

As expected, when it launched its four flights a week on the Abu Dhabi Bangalore sector earlier this year, the national carrier of the United Arab Emirates, Etihad Airways, will increase its frequency and make the flight a daily service from the Summer 2011 schedule which commences from March 25.

Compared to its other dominant GCC rivals Emirates airline and Qatar Airways. Etihad has one of the poorest utilisation of its bi-lateral rights with India. Hopefully this is something Neerja Bhatia, the country manager for Etihad Airways, can address soon.

Etihad operates a two class Airbus A320 narrow body to Bangalore, with 16 seats in business class and 120 in economy class. Emirates operates triple dailies to Dubai with A330-200's, some of which will be upgraded to A340-300s soon. Qatar Airways recently upgraded its daily Doha service to an A321 narrow body.

Like its famous cousin Emirates, Etihad Airways provides a complimentary chauffeur service for its premium class passengers flying in and out of Bangalore Airport using Mercedes Benz E class cars (compared to C class for Emirates business class passengers), which is also offered in Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Hyderabad.

With the introduction of Emirates' second daily on the Dubai Los Angeles route, the evening Bangalore Dubai flight, which offers connections, has seen a significant load factor increase.

Do you feel that Etihad should consider moving to a wide body operation by the Winter 2011 schedule in order to gain a leg up on Qatar and to keep up with Emirates? Post a comment.

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Air India to continue tradition of all women flights on International Womens' Day

National carrier Air India, continues the tradition of operating all women flights on International Womens' Day, 8th of March.

The airline will operate flights with all women crew together with women dispatchers, women load and trim staff, women engineers, women staff at check-in counters, women doctor for crew breathalyser test, women staff for security checks and women conducting the LOSA safety audit.

This year, the ultra-long-haul (ULH) Delhi-Toronto non-stop flight AI-187 will be operated by commanders Capt. Rashmi Miranda and Capt. Sunita Narula and First officers Capt. Varsha Sheoran and Capt. Nidhi Suri. The flight will be despatched by Ms Rashmi Verma.

Captains Miranda and Narula, also commanded the first ULH all women flight ever, when they flew AI-141 Mumbai-New York JFK non-stop last year.

The other flights which are being operated by an all-women crew are:

• AI-409/410 Delhi-Patna-Delhi
• AI-469 Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur-Delhi
• AI-811/812 Delhi-Lucknow-Delhi
• AI-603/604 Mumbai-Bangalore-Mumbai
• AI-569 Chennai-Mumbai
• IX-671 Chennai-Colombo-Chennai
• IX-302 Kozhikode-Mumbai-Kozhikode

Air India's tradition of all-women crew flights commenced in November 1985 when Capt. Saudamini Deshmukh and Capt. Nivedita Bhasin operated an Indian Airlines Fokker Friendship flight from Kolkata, West Bengal to Silchar. The same team operated the first all-women jet flight, an Indian Airlines Boeing 737 from Mumbai to Goa in 1989. The first international flight was operated in an Airbus A310 to Singapore on March 8, 2004, with Capt. Rashmi Miranda commanding (yes she will operate the YYZ flight tomorrow) and Capt. Kshmata Bajpai as first officer.

Enjoy yourselves ladies, and in case you come across some MCP crackpot who refuses to fly with women, feel free to show him the door, preferably with the tip of your shoe deeply embedded where the sun don't shine.

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Survey: How should an airline secure your business? What is important to you when buying international air tickets?

The readers of Bangalore Aviation are a well travelled, highly knowledgeable group. In our on-going efforts to make the site more interactive, we seek your valuable inputs on various aspects of aviation and travel.

This week, the questions concern international travel. What what factors are important to you when purchasing an international air travel ticket.

This survey is now closed. Read the survey results.

We will keep this survey open for two weeks.

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World's top 25 airlines by capacity as of March 2011

Delta Air Lines continues to be the world's largest airline measured by available seat-kilometre (ASK) capacity, offering a whopping 28.3 billion seat-kilometres per month. They are followed by American Airlines and in a change, Emirates airline has overtaken United Airlines for the third spot.


United is one of only two airlines that is offering a reduced seat capacity in March 2011 when compared to March 2010, the other is Japan Airlines (JAL) which essentially imploded last year, reducing capacity by more than 22% and sliding from 16th to 25 rank.

The two new entrants to the top 25 list are also the airlines with the largest capacity growth in the "Top 25" group. Qatar Airways with a 20.3% growth comes in at 22nd position, and Turkish Airlines (THY) led the growth story to rank at 24th position.

In comparison the India's largest airline, Jet Airways, offers a capacity less than half the size of lowest ranked Japan Airlines. Just under 3 billion ASKs for March 2011. Co-incidentally Jet leased out most of its luxurious Boeing 777-300ER fleet to 21st rank Thai Airways and to Turkish Airlines who successfully used the aircraft to rapidly ramp-up capacity, build their brand image resulting in a capture of significant traffic.

Makes one ponder if the lack of growth of Indian carriers is primary due to government regulations, taxation, and over-control? Or due to a lack of vision and execution by the Indian airlines? Or do foreign carriers have that something extra (vision, risk appetite, desire, service execution, etc.)?

What is your view? Post a comment.

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Boeing 777F freighter achieves two years in service

Two years ago in February 2009, Air France Cargo took delivery of the first Boeing 777F freighter aircraft. Watch delivery video here.

Powered by General Electric's GE90-110B1L engines which meet QC2 noise standards, the Boeing 777F freighter is based on the 777-200LR platform. It can carry more than 100 metric tons of payload and fly 4,900 nautical miles (9,070 kilometres).

Ever so quietly the aircraft is earning a reputation as the work horse of the industry, hauling diverse cargo from giant panda bears to high-performance race cars.

Boeing has delivered 39 of the 83 B777F's on order to nine operator airlines, two additional operators await delivery. The the fleet has flown approximately 120,000 hours with an average daily utilization rate of 11.34 hours. The airframe has an envious fleet schedule reliability of 99.37 percent, which means the freighter has a near-perfect record of on-time take-off and landings, an extremely critical factor in today's just-in-time" supply chain mantra.

FedEx Express with 12 aircraft is the largest 777 freighter operator with an additional 13 777 freighters in backlog.

Emirates SkyCargo, the freight division of Emirates airline, operates two 777 freighters. One of the two, A6-EFE was spotted in Bangalore once.

Boeing has produced a video on the 777 freighter which can be viewed here.

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DGCA releases investigation report in to Air India Boeing 747-400 VT-ESM Konark fire at Mumbai

India's aviation regulator and inspector the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has released its investigative report in the engine fire incident of Air India Boeing 747-400 VT-ESM Konark at Mumbai on September 4, 2009.

As per the DGCA, the primary cause for the accident was

the complete dislodging of No. 1 strut fuel feed line coupling due to dislodging of tie wire from the failed tie wire hole is the cause for heavy fuel leak and leaked fuel falling on hot #1 engine resulted into fire.

In a damning indictment of the lackadaisical "chalta hai" approach of various operations groups including the airline's engineering, cockpit and cabin crews, and the air traffic control personnel, the DGCA has also opined the contributory factors to include:

1. Not tightening the coupling to the proper specification and procedure during maintenance resulting into ductile failure of coupling material is the main contributory causative factor.
2. Installation , maintenance or environmental variables.
3. Failure of departure AME [aircraft maintenance engineer] in adhering to the standard procedures and his perfunctory function.
4. Lapses/failure of the pilots during walk around inspection
5. Non-conformance by the pilots [to] company operating procedures
6. Failure of ATC-SMC personnel for prompt and effective handling emergency situation.
7. Lack of situational awareness and crew coordination.

The DGCA has provided the following safety recommendations:

• Appropriate corrective action as deemed fit should be taken on the involved captain, first officer, all cabin crew and the Departure AME for their deficient performance and lapses.
• Appropriate corrective action as deemed fit should be taken on the SMC controller for his tardy and ineffective handling of the emergency situation.
• Air India shall Review maintenance program, its schedules and maintenance practices for more stringent, effective and frequent inspection and identification of fuel leak from the aircraft.
• The incident may be brought to the knowledge of all concerned.
• AAI [Airports Authority of India] shall introduce, monitor proper training procedure to all ATC personnel for handling emergency situation.
• AAI shall review the Existing System of documenting Departure/arrival register and flight progress strip for inclusion of information of aircraft registration.
• Installation of SMR [Surface Movement Radar] at Mumbai airport shall be done immediately by concerned airport agencies. [Note: Apparently the radar has been installed, but is not used by the ATC since they want all ground vehicles to also be fitted with a radar transponder. I wonder why can they not commence with surface tracking of aircraft first and push for the early implementation of ground vehicle tracking?]

In a reflection of their sensationalism, the mainstream news media which resorted to extreme scaremongering reporting at the time of the incident have not even reported the release of the DGCA findings. The fire is out, and why should they care about the truth.

The full report is embedded below for online viewing or can be downloaded here.

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Survey Results: Top purchase factors important to domestic air travel passengers

After the price of a ticket, the on-time performance of an airline is the biggest factor influencing a potential traveller to purchase a ticket for domestic air travel. This explains why punctuality maniacal IndiGo is rapidly gaining market share in India.

Thanks to the hundreds of Bangalore Aviation readers who participated in this survey.


Survey respondents could select up to five determining factors from a choice of ten and were offered a catch-all "Others" option. Responses were for type of aircraft - something I use a lot when making my travel purchase decisions, but for some reason, forgot to include in the survey. Thanks for reminding me.

What is surprising is the third factor after price and punctuality -- comfort. Respondents were marginally more concerned with comfort ahead if schedule, length of trip (i.e. non-stop vs. connections).

Only a third of respondents were concerned with frequent flier benefits and the reputation of the airline. I guess the corporate traveller is not a vocal majority at Bangalore Aviation.

Less than a third were concerned about baggage allowance, something that is still expected, and offered, even by low fare carriers in India, bundled in to the cost of the ticket. Meals scored even less, and most Bangalore Aviation readers could not care less if there is a premium class offered.

Thanks for sharing your inputs, and stay tuned for the next survey shortly. If you have a particular question you would like asked, please suggest it via a comment.

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