The Indian Air Force (IAF) suffered the first crash its prestigious Sukhoi Su-30MKI fighter earlier today when it crashed early this morning while on a routine training exercise. The pilot Wing Commander S.V. Munje ejected safely, but navigator Wing Commander P.S. Narah was unfortunately killed. The crash occurred at 1030 (0500 GMT), about 70 km south-east of Jaisalmer in Rajasthan …

Interglobe Aviation promoted IndiGo airlines is on a high. Like it’s compatriot SpiceJet, it has been steadily growing using fine strokes to keep it’s costs low and constantly improve it’s value proposition to it’s customers. With 20 aircraft which constitutes about 6.5% of the total commercial airliner population of India, IndiGo’s has grown it’s market share to 13%, up 3% …

Seoul’s Incheon International airport (ICN) won the Airports Council International’s (ACI) “Airport Service Quality” award for best airport in the world, followed by Singapore’s Changi (SIN), Hong Kong International Airport (HKG), Nagoya’s Central Japan airport (NGO), and Halifax (YHZ) in Canada. This is the fourth consecutive year that Incheon the 8-year-old airport serving Korea’s capital Seoul, has won award. ACI …

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 …

Kingfisher Airlines recently became the first Indian airline to get on board the social nano-blogging service Twitter. Following the success of JetBlue and Southwest, quite a few airlines have joined Twitter, including British Airways, Qatar Airways, Gulf Air, and United Airlines. While I laud the bold initiatives by Kingfisher Airlines, at present it is only broadcasting adverts and updates — …

Data for March 2009 released by the International Air Transport Association (IATA) for scheduled international traffic shows continued declines. Passenger demand fell to 11.1% below March 2008 levels while airlines cut international passenger capacity by 4.4% resulting in an average load factor of 72.1% a 5.4% decline from March 2008. Air freight demand, a crucial indicator of global economic activity …

At a recently meeting of the infrastructure committee of the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce we had the opportunity to hear from Mr. Marcel Hungerbuehler about India’s second greenfield private airport Bengaluru International Airport (BIA), which opened last May. Based on his discussions and presentation, I compiled some graphs on airport and air travel performance. There is little doubt …

I went spotting last week and managed to get close enough to get some close-up pictures of pilots during landing. I was rather surprised to see all the Airbus pilots leaning forward when the one picture of a Boeing pilot shows him sitting back comfortably. It will be interesting to hear comments on the differences. Any pilots reading Bangalore Aviation? …

The past week has been an incident filled “odd” one for Bengaluru International Airport (BIA). On Monday (day 1 of the week), a Kingfisher Airlines Airbus A320 skidded off runway 27 in rain and high winds and damaged runway lights and its landing gear, forcing the airport to shut down the runway during the peak international flights period for an …

Dashing the hopes of many domestic airlines who are desperate for foreign airline investments, the Government of India has put in to effect new rules governing the investments and operations of scheduled airlines which include fixing minimum levels of equity and barring any investment by foreign carriers. The rules, which were approved a few months ago, were incorporated recently into …

Speculation is rife that the middle east is finally slowing down. The Gulf Daily News is reporting that Bahrain based Gulf Air will cancel its deal to lease four long-range Boeing 777-300ER aircraft from Indian carrier Jet Airways after just six months. Jet Airways Boeing 777-300ER leased to Gulf Air painted in Gulf Air livery.Photo courtesy and copyright A.J. Best.In …

Menzies Aviation-Bobba which handles one of the two Cargo terminals at the Bengaluru International Airport won the “Best Partner” award at the recently concluded fire prevention week at the airport. The Passenger Terminal group won the award for the “best division” within the operator Bengaluru International Airport Limited (BIAL). External partners and internal divisions were judged on the levels of …

Going against the current flow of deferred deliveries or outright cancellations, the state-owned National Aviation Company of India Limited (NACIL) better known as Air India will induct 30 aircraft in the current fiscal year ending March 2010, and another 45 by March 2012, as part of its fleet expansion plans. Compare this with the large scale deferrals and cancellations by …

A Kingfisher Airlines Airbus A320-232 VT-KFT performing flight IT 432 from Kolkata to Bangalore via Hyderabad veered and skidded off the runway at Bengaluru International Airport (BIA) due to rain and high winds. There were 138 passengers including crew on board at the time of the incident, which happened at 21:35 hrs (16:05Z) yesterday. An airline source informed PTI “The …

This weekend was not very conducive to spotting. The winds came out of the west making the active runway at Bengaluru International Airport 27. With an east west alignment, the only time to take pictures is in the late afternoon when the sun has moved to the west. In the process of exploration, I discovered that Google maps is outdated …

A while ago I had a Singapore Airlines Cargo Boeing 747 freighter registration 9V-SFD thunder over my head. Whipped out my camera and caught a few unusual images. One does not get to see the belly of a plane this close very frequently. By this time next year, Singapore Airlines will retire its Boeing 747-400 fleet. The venerable MegaTop will …

Japan Air Lines (JAL) has announced a reduction in its Tokyo New Delhi flight from a daily to four times a week. JAL joins a large list of foreign carriers like Aeroflot, Austrian Airlines, Dragonair, Virgin, Singapore Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Delta, KLM, All Nippon Airways (ANA), Sri Lankan, Air France, Lufthansa, and Malaysia Airlines, who have either withdrawn or …

Low cost carrier Air Arabia has launched its Sharjah, UAE to Dabolim, Goa, India, three times a week service. Goa is the 13th destination in India after Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Chennai, Coimbatore, Delhi, Jaipur, Kochi, Kozhikode, Mumbai, Nagpur, Thiruvanathapuram and Hyderabad. The schedule is :Depart Sharjah Tue, Thu, Sat at 00:25 arrive Goa at 05:05Depart Goa Tue, Thu, Sat at 05:50 …

Boeing released images of the 6000th 737. The plane is delivered to Norwegian Air Shuttle under a lease agreement with ILFC. Registration LN-NOL. Click on the images for a larger size.

March continued the gloomy news for the domestic airline industry in India, with a decline. For the month of March 2009 domestic passenger count stood at 3.15 million down from 3.32 million in February and 3.31 million in January. Despite Kingfisher airlines continuing to be the largest domestic airline in India with almost 27% market share in March and 27.27% …