Jet, Kingfisher, Spicejet rise on ATF price cut

Shares of Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, Spicejet have surged on ATF price cut.

Shares of Jet Airways is currently trading at Rs. 459, up Rs11.45 or 3%. The stock has hit a high of Rs. 461 and a low of Rs. 450.

Kingfisher Airlines shares is currently trading at Rs. 43, up Rs1.05. The stock has hit a high of Rs. 43.80 and a low of Rs. 43.

Shares of Spicejet Ltd is currently trading at Rs41, up Rs1.20. The stock has hit a high of Rs42 and a low of Rs41.
Source: India Infoline

Jet Airways leads domestic airlines growth

The Indian aviation sector continued its upward swing in November, carrying 4.88 million passengers in the domestic segment, compared to 4.62 million in October 2010, even as Jet Airways emerged the top performer having a 19.2 per cent (or 9.34 lakh passengers) marketplace share.

About 46.8 million passengers utilized domestic airlines in January-November 2010, which shows an 18.9 per cent growth compared to the similar period last year, based on details released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Jet Airways had the greatest percentage share of the domestic marketplace of 19.2 per cent (9.34 lakh passengers) even though its sister carrier Jet Lite had a 7 per cent share (3.43 lakh), which adds as much as a total 26.2 per cent marketplace share.

Kingfisher Airlines was second having a 19.1 per cent (9.32 lakh) marketplace share, followed by Indigo with 17.3 per cent (8.43 lakh) and Air India with 17.1 per cent (8.36 lakh). Spice Jet recorded a 13.3 per cent share (6.50 lakh) even though Go Air brought up the rear with 6.9 per cent (3.37 lakh).

The seat issue was the greatest for IndiGo (91 per cent), followed by Spice Jet (87.5 per cent), Kingfisher Airlines (86.7 per cent), Go Air (85.4 per cent), JetLite (82 per cent), Jet Airways (77 per cent), and the lowest for the national carrier Air India (76.9) per cent.

The overall on-time performance of the domestic airlines for November 2010 was 76.4 per cent.

Airlines set to take off after turbulence

The year 2010 was each a year that saw a silver lining in addition to dark clouds within the aviation industry. Except Air India, which continues to face difficult times, other airlines started a steady march on the recovery right after the slowdown many years of 2008 and 2009.

What ought to be a huge relief on the Indian aviation authorities could be the fact how the US did not downgrade the Indian safety regulator, Directorate General of Civil Aviation, to sub-Saharan Africa levels. The final nod for the second airport in Mumbai right after a delay of three many years and the opening of new T3 terminal in New Delhi were a large plus for travellers.

But just as very good news was flowing in thick and fast right after 2 many years of gloom, the worst fears of aviation came real with India witnessing 1 of its worst ever air crashes on May possibly 22. Air India Express's flight 812 crashed at Mangalore airport, killing 158 from the 166 men and women on board.

The crash, coming amid fears which started within the troubled 2008-09 that some crises-ridden airlines may perhaps not have even adequate income to maintain their fleet airworthy, led to intense financial surveillance from the carriers. The scrutiny once more revealed that except Air India, most other critical airlines' fortunes were showing changes—thanks to a double-digit growth in domestic air travel.

This is borne by the fact that 2009 saw 445.1 lakh men and women flying inside India. But the January-November 2010 period itself saw that figure getting left behind with 468 lakh men and women flying in India. Considering about 50 lakh men and women fly in December, 2010 may perhaps witness a 16% rise more than 2009. "This growth is likely to be even more pronounced, next year, from the economy searching up. So the large upside for the year 2011 is that most airlines, barring —of course—Air India, could come to be profitable again. But simultaneously the large worry is rising oil prices with crude touching $90 a barrel. This may perhaps force fare hikes and affect air travel growth," mentioned a senior ministry official.

That worry apart, financially airlines are searching to fly to the black. Financially-strained Kingfisher got approval to restructure its mounting debts. The country's second largest low-cost carrier (LCC), SpiceJet, was finally bought more than by a south-based group with deep pockets, signalling the end of income crunch, and it, subsequently, also began overseas flights. Similarly, the largest LCC, IndiGo, is all set to launch an IPO and start international flights next year. In fact, the aviation market came a full circle this year. The sacking of 450-odd Jet Airways cabin crew staffers had signalled the beginning from the global meltdown-induced crisis for Indian airlines in 2008. This year, Jet contacted all its sacked staffers and about half of them have joined back within the past few months.

Jet Airways Announces to Launch Daily Non-Stop Flight From Milano Malpensa To New Delhi

Jet Airways, India’s premier international airline, today announced that it will commence daily non-stop flights from Milano Malpensa to New Delhi from December 5th, 2010 in code share with Alitalia, producing Milan the twenty-fourth international destination on Jet Airways’ network.

Naresh Goyal, Chairman, Jet Airways, said: “We consider Milan a strategic destination, getting the company and commercial center of Italy. India, an emerging marketplace with a booming economy is a youthful and vibrant marketplace that holds beneficial potential. Jet Airways and I consume pride in bringing a taste of Modern India to Italy. Based on our experience in Europe, with a direct flight we expect the marketplace to grow by 30%. During the very first month we already have 89% occupancy on the new flight from Milan. We are therefore incredibly optimistic about this flight. Our product and our service inside air and on ground are anything incredibly special, warm and distinctive and we’re certain that the Italian marketplace will enjoy this”.

Rocco Sabelli, Managing Director of Alitalia, said: “We are incredibly happy to jobs with Jet Airways. This agreement represents a incredibly essential development for Alitalia. Connecting Italy from the principal worldwide destinations, reinforcing our leadership position inside Italian marketplace and our offer of intercontinental flights from Milan is a further step in our strategy. Alitalia stands out as the very first SkyTeam airline for getting signed an agreement with Jet Airways”.

“I am particularly happy from the new daily direct flight to Milano Malpensa – New Delhi operated by the largest Indian airline. This link will support to strengthen the relationships in between our market, wherever only the North West recorded 50% of exports to India, and a single from the major globe powers with powerful economic growth” – mentioned Giuseppe Bonomi, Chairman, SEA Milan Airports – “Malpensa confirms its leadership inside relationship with East Asia thanks also to this new flight activated inside a short time thanks our trade policy that has brought sure results: today Malpensa connects 168 destinations, reaching 86 cities outside Europe and 110 airlines”.

Jet Airways’ new flight, the only a single to offer a daily direct link in between Italy and India will connect Milan, the fashion and type capital from the world, to historic New Delhi, the capital of India.

Effective 5th December the flights will operate towards the right after schedule:

9W 141 / AZ 7082 Milano Malpensa/New Delhi: 21.25-09.55*

9W 142 / AZ 7083 New Delhi/Milano Malpensa: 13.20-18.00 (*the next day)

The airline will likely be utilizing its contemporary Airbus 330-200 aircraft configured in a couple of classes, with 30 seats in Première (Business Class seats that can be converted to 180° lie-flat beds) and 190 seats in Economy (ergonomically created seats for much more space and comfort).

Jet Airways’ and Alitalia’s guests will likely be able to experience the new state-of-the-art Terminal 3 of New Delhi Airport and achieve over 42 destinations on Jet Airways network in India. New Delhi, thanks to its strategic geographical location in between Italy and Asia, is an ideal gateway for guests from Italy to travel beyond India to other Jet Airways destinations just like Colombo, Bangkok, Kathmandu, and Dhaka. The airline will thus provide its guests a seamless travel experience as soon as transiting at New Delhi Airport.
Jet Airways Konnect

Jet Airways on a hiring mode

Mumbai: A controversy pops up among the two leading airline industries which include Jet Airways and Kingfisher Airlines wherein the latter has blamed the former of recruiting 50 Kingfisher benched pilots as co-pilots. Jet Airways denied the recruitment and commented that Kingfisher has voluntarily enable individuals pilots off due to no immediate requirement.

The Naresh Goyal controlled India's largest personalized carrier by marketplace share also plans to hire some experienced pilots as commanders within the competitor. The very first batch in the 29 benched pilots has already joined them. The airline has also confirmed the amount of pilots sent.

Due for the assumption of facing an opposition within the management, the airline has planned to maintain a meeting on 30th of November, so as to discuss the new recruitments. "How can we permit pilots to arrive and fly with us once our personal pilots aren't given their due, aren't promoted and the salaries have not been reinstated post the revival," stated a disgruntled pilot, who did not would like to be called due to the sensitivity in the matter.

Due to this kind of reactions, a huge opposition is expected within the serving pilots to your newly recruited pilots.
With the growing demand for air travel, Jet nevertheless has hiring plans as based on the marketplace estimates, Air travel is set to grow by 20-25% within the year ending March 31, 2011.

Although Jet leads with a marketplace share of 26.2% followed by Kingfisher of 19%, Jet Airways has had no choice but to hop pilots from its rivals Air India and Kingfisher since the manpower resources have not kept pace with its growth in aviation industries. Pilots must be trained with an experience of a few flying hours before their recruitment.

For the newly recruited pilots from Kingfisher, just a week's long training is adequate to your transition to fly Jet's A330 from Kingfisher's Airbus A320. As informed by the marketplace executives, Jet's management is looking forward to hiring around 300 much more commanders more than the next three years who have more than 3000 hours of flying experience,although the airline entirely declined to give the definite figure.
Source: Silicon India

Air India sacks COO with unsafe track record

Pawan Arora has been sacked as the chief operating officer of Air India Express, the low cost international arm of Air India. The decision was taken by the full AI board, which met the following on Thursday. Sources mentioned AI COO Gustav Baldauf has protested for the civil aviation ministry against Arora's removal.

"Baldauf selected Arora and is unhappy in the decision to sack him. We have told him it's up to him to decide what he wants to do," a top ministry official said.

Another high-profile appointment — of Stefan Sukumar as chief of training — is also under the scanner, having a two-member committee getting formed to glimpse into the "process of recruitment" and submit a report for the board within a fortnight.

In an action-packed day, AI CMD Arvind Jadhav and three independent directors — Air Chief Marshal (retd) Fali H Major, FICCI secretary general Amit Mitra and Ambuja Realty chairman Harsh Neotia — met civil aviation minister Praful Patel just before proceeding for the board meeting.

Thereafter, the Board unanimously decided to sack Arora, over a grounds that a number of issues about him weren't known at the time of his appointment — as reported very first by HT.

Arora joined AI on October 11. On October 22, HT exposed the truth how the Director General of Civil Aviation had removed him from four key flight-safety posts just before he joined the national carrier.

On November 1, AI's independent directors met the PM's main secretary TKA Nair to tell him they have been "misguided" and "kept from the dark" about Arora's record.

It also emerged that Arora was the chief reference for Baldauf, inside a report by a headhunting agency hired to short-list candidates to your AI COO's post.

Within months of Baldauf taking over, Arora was produced AI Express COO. Each earlier worked together in Jet Airways Konnect.

Jet Air's India passenger traffic in Sept up 37%

Jet Airways Ltd, India's largest private carrier by sales, mentioned its domestic passenger targeted traffic in September grew 37.1 percent on the year ago, whilst its international targeted traffic rose 36.4 percent.

Jet Airways has now posted 11 consecutive months of growth in passenger traffic, it said.

The group, which includes low-cost carrier JetLite, includes a marketplace share of 26.9 percent inside the country's aviation sector, it added.

Source: Sify

Jet Airways criticised for 'encouraging' animal abuse

New Delhi: Jet Airways has been flooded with e-mails and calls following the September trouble of their inflight magazine, JetWings, printed an article on bull fighting. An animal rights organisation has written towards the airline, prompting the latter to apologise.

For NRIs, India has now arrived

The Federation of Indian Animal Protection Organisations mentioned in a statement Tuesday: 'We have been incredibly disturbed to see Jet Airways glorifying photographs of matadors tormenting bulls with banderillas sticking to their bleeding backs in their magazine.'

Responding towards the organisation's calls and e-mails, Manech Davar, executive publisher said: 'We do understand the elements raised by you and would not wish to find as an organisation and publication that encourages unjust endeavours. We assure you that there wouldn't be any more features on the same in JetWings.'

Luxury first-class flying

The organisation mentioned that in Spain, the Canary islands outlawed the sport of bull fighting way back in 1991, followed by Barcelona and Catalonia, which have been centres of this tradition.

'There is growing condemnation of bullfighting throughout Spain, across the EU and on the world,' the statement said.
Source: Sify

Airline debt recast hinges on RBI cues

The debt restructuring of domestic carriers Kingfisher Airlines and Paramount could be delayed, as banks have decided to approach Reserve Bank of India for fresh sweeteners. Bankers said that in response to an earlier request, RBI had allowed a second debt restructuring for aviation companies. But the package does not address the issue of provisioning — a key element to the plan.

Whenever the interest rate on a loan is reset or the tenure is extended to soften terms for a borrower, banks have to treat the arrangement as restructuring. This requires higher provisioning. Banks now want RBI to allow them to treat the restructured aviation loans as a standard asset, which requires lower provisioning.

They had cited the example of the real estate sector and the special dispensation given at the height of the financial crisis to argue their case. The banking regulator, however, allowed only a marginal relaxation in provisioning.

Bankers said the benefit of a second restructuring would only be available to a few lenders, as most had not yet reworked the terms of earlier loans. “This is hardly a benefit. We will wait until we get an exemption from higher provisioning,” said the head of a public sector bank. Another banker said lenders would take up the issue with RBI again.

While there is no consortium arrangement in lending to airlines, most large banks have an exposure to Air India, Kingfisher and Jet. The restructuring will be particularly crucial for Kingfisher. The promoters of Paramount, on the other hand, are looking to repay the airline’s debt from accruals from other group companies.

In the case of Kingfisher, the proposal includes allowing a two-year moratorium on short-term debt, lowering the interest rate and converting part of the domestic debt into external commercial borrowings or cumulative convertible preference shares. The airline had a combined debt of Rs 7,413 crore at the end of December 2009. It posted losses of Rs 1,647 crore at the end of March 2010.

When the proposal for industry-wide debt restructuring was last sent to RBI, central bank Deputy Governor Usha Thorat had told a gathering of bank chiefs and government officials that bank balance sheets were looking healthy enough for them to meet the burden of higher provisioning. Soon after, RBI had allowed banks to go for a second restructuring.

Source: Business Standard

Jet Airways inks Rs 283 crore deal with IBM

Jet Airways, country’s largest airline in terms of market share, on Tuesday announced a deal worth $62 million (approximately Rs 283 crore) for 10 years with IBM to outsource its business transformation and information technology services.

Under the deal, IBM will absorb IT employees of the domestic airlines, said M Shivkumar, senior VP, finance of Jet Airways.“The outsourced model will help us maximise our revenues.” said Mr Shivkumar. Nearly 45 employees of a 58-member IT team will be shifted to IBM. Some will be accommodated in other sections while a few people may leave Jet.

Jet Airways will look forward to leverage IBM's domain knowledge of the global airline industry and its technology leadership to meet the group’s business transformation objectives, the company said in a statement.

The Naresh Goyal-led company, was until recently using its inhouse technology to meet IT requirements.

IBM will now support Jet Airways with IT Infrastructure and application support services, including employee transition, data centre operations, central helpdesk support, server and storage operation.

The Economic Times

Air traffic up 19.3 pc; Jet Airways leads

MUMBAI: Passengers carried by domestic carriers rose 19.3 percent to 33.9 million passengers in Jan-Aug with Jet Airways recording the highest market share among domestic carriers, government data showed.

Jet Airways and its budget arm, Jetlite, recorded a combined market share of 27 percent in August while Kingfisher Airlines had a 20 percent share of the aviation market. State-run Air India had a 18.3 percent market share and budget airline SpiceJet had a market share of 12.6 for the month, data from the federal civil aviation ministry showed.

Seat factors for August - historically a lean season for carriers - dipped for Jet and SpiceJet. Jet recorded a seat factor of 70.4 percent in August compared with 73.8 percent in July while SpiceJet's seat factor fell to 70.3 percent from 76.8 percent. Kingfisher recorded a seat factor of 80.9 percent from 79.3 percent last month, the data showed.

Source : The Economic Times

Jet to deploy no-frills planes on short global routes

The country’s largest private carrier by fleet size Jet Airways is ready to take on FlyDubai and Air AsiaX on short-haul international routes with the airline is readying strategies to deploy its no-frill arms JetKonnect and JetLite to counter the competition.

"Operating JetLite and JetKonnect on these routes is absolutely an option. We have three guns in our waist-holster," a Jet Airways official told FE. Asked if the airline had enough jets to be operated by JetKonnect and JetLite, the official said,"Aircraft is available. We can always lease it."

Jet Airways, JetKonnect, its all-economy, no-frills service, and JetLite have a combined fleet strength of 112 aircraft and operate over 500 flights daily. While JetKonnect and JetLite operate services for the price-conscious customers, Jet Airways serves the full-fare passengers. The airline launched JetKonnect to take on no-frill carriers like IndiGo and SpiceJet. After the global financial crisis hit the domestic industry, companies started tightening their travel budgets forcing employees to travel by low-cost airlines. This resulted into passengers shifting from full-fare carriers to budget airlines.

After the world economy started improving leading to demand for international travel some of the no-frill international carriers have launched very attractive fares. For example, Air Asia recently offered a promotional fare of Re 1 (plus taxes and other charges of Rs 475) on Delhi-Kuala Lumpur route. FlyDubai also announced cheaper fare on Lucknow-Dubai.

"With domestic airlines IndiGo and SpiceJet putting plans in place for foreign operation Jet may have to look for alternative model on Middle East and South East Asian routes," Amadeus India managing director Ankur Bhatia said.

Bhatia said that Jet would be able to compete with airlines like Air AsiaX only when they hub passengers in India and then disseminate them to other destinations. "Jet Airways has major advantage of strong and robust domestic network," he said.

Source: Financial Express

Jet Airways is the Most preferred airline for business class

In an awards ceremony held in New Delhi on 8 September, 2010, Jet Airways, the premier International airline of India, was declared the "Most preferred airline for business class". The event was hosted by Indian business channel CNBC AWAAZ and One Stop Shop, one of the country's fastest growing e-commerce businesses. This is the fourth year that CNBC AWWAZ has held the awards to honour the country's tourism ancillary and best in class travel.

The award was presented to Jet Airways representatives by India's Honourable Minister for Tourism Kumari Selija. In response to receiving the honour, Jet Airways said:

"The CNBC Awaaz Travel Awards 2010 are widely respected across the tourism and trade industry and we are delighted to receive this honour. At Jet Airways, we are committed to offering our guests the very best travel experience in the skies, and awards such as these stand testimony to the quality of our services and encourage us to further raise the bar in customer service excellence."

Jet Airways currently operates a fleet of 90 aircraft, including 10 Boeing 777-33 ERs and 12 Airbus A330-200s. Flight paths include the whole of India, as well as several International locations such as New York, Brussels, Johannesburg, Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, and the UK.

From the UK, Jet Airways flies to and from several airports including Birmingham, Glasgow, London Heathrow, Belfast International and Manchester, with destinations including New York, Hong Kong, Calcutta, Delhi, Mauritius, and Bangkok.