Vedant Agarwal

A frequent flyer for both work and pleasure - Vedant has held elite status on many of the major alliances and airlines. Also an avid aviation photographer, his pictures have been published in and on the covers of many international publications.

BREAKING: Indian Government allows resumption of scheduled international flights as per bilateral agreements

View of part of the ramp at Bangalore Airport at night.

The Ministry of Civil Aviation has instructed the Directorate General of Civil Aviation to resume scheduled international flights as per pre-COVID bilateral agreements from 15 December 2021. All scheduled international flights to/from India were halted from 23 March 2020 when India went into lockdown, following this international flights gradually restarted with the vande bharath repatriation flights, which were followed by …

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Singapore airlines unveils 737 MAX interiors with flat bed seats

In 2018, it was announced that Silkair the wholly owned subsidiary which operated narrow body aircraft would be merged into the parent airline Singapore Airlines which up until that point exclusively flew wide-bodies. At the same time it was announced that the erstwhile Silkair aircraft would receive a cabin upgrade to bring the passenger experience on par with the parent …

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Rakesh Jhunjhunwala backed Akasa Air orders 72 Boeing 737 MAX

American aircraft manufacturer Boeing has announced an order for 72 Boeing 737 MAXs from Akasa Air, the new airline founded by ex-Jet Airways CEO Vinay Dube with funding from Rakesh Jhunjhunwala. The order which is valued at nearly $9 billion at list prices, which would have been placed at a sizeable discount as per industry norms includes two variants of …

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Pictures: Indian Air Force Rafale, Chinook and Apache at Aero India 2021

Aero India 2021 began on the 3rd of February and on display were three of the Indian armed forces latest additions, the Dassault Rafale EH, Boeing CH-47F Chinook and the Boeing AH-64E Apache. Dassault Rafale EH There are five Dassault Rafales at the show, these aircraft are part of the 36 aircraft order placed by the Indian government in 2015. …

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Vistara to start London flights on 28 August. Bookings Open.

Vistara's first 787-9 lands at New Delhi airport. Photo by Yash Kumar (TeamAviationIndia).

Vistara has officially announced that it will begin operating flights to London Heathrow on the 28 August 2020. BangaloreAviation had previously reported that the airline would likely begin flights this month. The service which will be operated thrice weekly will be operated under the bilateral transport bubble between India and the United Kingdom. The airline is announced one-way fares of …

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Emirates to operate additional repatriation flights to/from Bangalore in August

Emirates Boeing 777-200ER. Copyright Vedant Agarwal.

Middle eastern carrier, Emirates has announced that it will operate repatriation flights between Dubai and Bangalore on 21, 23 and 25 August 2020. The schedule for these flights are: Flight Number From To Departure Arrival EK 565 BLR DXB 10:25 12:45 EK 564 DXB BLR 03:15 08:55 The flights can be booked on Emirates website and are shown as being …

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Lufthansa will resume Germany to India passenger flights from 13 August

Lufthansa Boeing 747-8i D-ABYI 'Fanhansa Livery'.

German flag carrier Lufthansa will resume inbound passenger operations to India from 13 August 2020. The routes being reinstated are: Frankfurt to Delhi (Airbus A340-300) Munich to Delhi (Airbus A350-900) Frankfurt to Bangalore (Airbus A330-300) Frankfurt to Mumbai (Airbus A330-300) The airline has already been operating outbound flights from the three cities to Frankfurt and Munich. As per the latest …

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Karnataka guidelines for international arrivals (V4, August 2020)

The government of Karnataka has issued revised guidelines for international arrivals into the state. Passengers must pre-register before travelling As with the earlier guidelines, all passengers must pre-register on the Karnataka COVID war room website at least 72 hours before travel. Categorized arrivals All passengers will be categorized on arrival. Passengers showing any symptoms of COVID-19 will be sent to …

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Indigo’s Q1FY21 results analysis: Highlighting the depth of the challenges

India’s largest airline reported its first-quarter results yesterday. If Q4FY20 losses of 870 crores were of concern, Q1FY21 has only made this much worse. The loss at 2,844 crores was three times the loss of the previous quarter. This was in the most part not surprising given that much of the quarter had aircraft sitting on the ground due to …

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Air India Phase 5 repatriation flights schedule. Vande Bharat flights to/from the US and Europe

Air India Airbus A320 VT-EXC.

Air India has released its schedule for phase 5 of the Vande Bharat Mission (VBM) flights which will be operated from 1st to 31st August 2020. The airline will operate three times a week to New York JFK, Newark, Washington DC, Chicago, San Francisco and Paris. It will operate four times a week to Frankfurt. The current schedule for flights …

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Vistara introduces full-flat business class seats on it’s new Airbus A321neo

Vistara has taken delivery of it’s first Airbus A321neo from Airbus’ Finkenwerder plant in Hamburg, Germany. The aircraft is the first of six A321neo for the airline, on lease by Air Lease Corporation, is part of a 50 A320neo family aircraft order that the airline placed in 2018. The aircraft was meant to be deployed on short to medium-haul routes …

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Schedule of phase 4 Vande Bharat repatriation flights to India

Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner line number 35 test registered N1015 (later became VT-ANH) at the India Aviation show, Hyderabad March 2012. Photo copyright Devesh Agarwal.

Phase 4 of the Vande Bharat repatriation flights is kicking off on 3 July and includes flights to India from Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, Japan, Kenya, Kyrgyzstan, Philippines, Myanmar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Thailand, Ukraine, United Kingdom, United States of America and Vietnam. The schedule of flights being operated to these countries from India is available here. The …

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Air India Phase 4 repatriation flights schedule. Vande Bharat flights from India to US, UK, Australia, ME and more

Air India Boeing 787-8 VT-ANE.

It has been over a month since Air India began operating the first set of flights under the Vande Bharat mission of the government of India to repatriate stranded Indian’s overseas and travellers stranded in India. The latest schedule of Air India flights departing from India has been released. Passengers can directly book seats on these flights on Air India’s …

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Can Jet Airways make a comeback operating repatriation flights?

Earlier this month, the government of India began allowing repatriation flights back to India for Indian’s stranded overseas. While all these flights were initially operated exclusively by Air India and Air India Express, they were recently expanded to be operated by private carriers as well. Read: How the government could spin repatriation flights to oil India’s stagnant aviation sector Since …

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The contactless procedure of flying through Bangalore airport

With domestic flights set to resume from tomorrow, the Karnataka government had outlined rules for passengers arriving into the state. Now Bangalore airport has outlined the process that will have to be followed by passengers to fly through the airport. As part of its precautions against COVID-19, the airport has launched a “Parking-to-Boarding contactless journey”. Which includes: Pre-Entry All passengers …

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Quarantine rules for air passengers traveling to Karnataka

With the government of India allowing domestic air passenger flights to resume from 25th May, there have been doubts about the quarantine rules that passengers will be subjected to when they arrive at their destination. The government of Karnataka has released a detailed a standard operating procedure (SOP) for all returnees to the state. The highlights of this document are: …

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How the government could spin repatriation flights to oil India’s stagnant aviation sector

A tail parade of each of Air India's Boeing aircraft as in 2011. The 747-400, 777-300ER, 777-200LR and 737-800.

Guest post by Shivam Vahia. The Government of India (GoI) has undertaken a massive exercise dubbed “Vande Bharat Mission” to bring back Indians stuck in other countries amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. These flights are technically “repatriation” flights and not “evacuation” because the passengers are paying for the seat, and the state isn’t bearing the end-cost. Unlike previous efforts like the …

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New repatriation flights from 16 May from Australia, Canada, Europe, Central Asia, Russia and more

Air India Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner line number 35 test registered N1015 (later became VT-ANH) at the India Aviation show, Hyderabad March 2012. Photo copyright Devesh Agarwal.

Following the first week of repatriation flights operated by Air India and Air India Express, phase two of the Vande Bharat repatriation flights have now been released. Flights will be operated from the following countries which were not covered in phase one: Afghanistan – Kabul Armenia – Yeravan Australia – Sydney, Melbourne Belarus – Minsk Canada – Vancouver, Toronta France …

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How to book a repatriation flight from India to USA, UK and Singapore

When the Ministry of Civil Aviation (MoCA) announced repatriation flights to bring people back to India, it was unclear whether people would be allowed to fly out of India on the aircraft that would bring stranded Indians back. Yesterday, after a notification from the Ministry of Home Affairs, Air India began taking bookings for flights to the United States, United …

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Virgin Atlantic to leave Gatwick, retire 747s and cut 3,150 jobs

Virgin Atlantic has announced its plan for their “post-Covid19 future“. The airline expects that demand will take three years to return to post corona levels and that it will have to reshape and resize its business to adapt. The CEO of Virgin Atlantic Shai Weiss commented “We have weathered many storms since our first flight 36 years ago, but none …

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