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 In the process of exploration, I discovered that Google maps is outdated …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Delta, KLM, All Nippon Airways (ANA), Sri Lankan, Air France, Lufthansa, and Malaysia Airlines, who have either withdrawn or …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% …

Malaysia Airlines has announced whopping discounts of up to 55% to 35 cities worldwide under the popular Malaysia Airlines Travel Fair (MATF) till May 3, 2009 for travel between April 14 and October 31, 2009. Travellers can purchase their tickets through their travel agents, airline ticket offices and from Malaysia Airlines online. The promotional fares meant primarily for the South …

SkyTeam and Vietnam Airlines signed a preliminary agreement confirming the airlines’ first step towards full membership into the SkyTeam alliance by 2010, pending fulfilment of the alliance’s membership requirements. South East Asia and South Asia are a weak geography in the alliance’s network, which Vietnam Airlines will hopefully fulfill. Vietnam Airlines operates 64 routes to 20 domestic and 24 international …

A collection of commercial airlines from my latest spotting trip. I hope you enjoy the results. Click on the images for a larger view.

I was given an opportunity to record a podcast at the Innovation Analysis Group and provide an overview on some latest developments in the Indian civil aviation market. Some of the topics covered; the rise of SpiceJet and IndiGo, and the airport development fee at New Delhi and Mumbai airports. You can hear and download the podcast here.

An April 7th incident involving a Qantas Boeing 737-800, registration VH-VYL performing flight QF-1020 from Hobart, to Sydney, in Australia, has raised the spectre of a failing radio altimeter which is suspected of causing the recent fatal crash of the Boeing 737-800 Turkish Airlines flight TK1951 at Amsterdam Schiphol on February 25th. In very similar circumstances, the Qantas flight was …

Last night, as Easter Sunday came to an end, a traffic jam began at Bengaluru International Airport (BIA), which exposed the weakness of having only four “contact stands” (aero-bridge equipped gates) at the new Bengaluru International Airport, capable of handling wide-body aircraft. In the current summer schedule, the peak period for international flights, is between 22:00 (10 PM) and 02:00 …

On Good Friday April 10th at Everett, Air France took delivery of the 777th Boeing 777, in this case 300ER registration F-GZND, and the first aircraft to wear the new Air France livery. Boeing image Air France released a video documenting the delivery ceremony and departure of the ferry flight on April 10th, and the early morning arrival at Paris …

Time magazine has an article critical of Boeing titled “Boeing Proves A Poorly Run Company Can Still Do Badly”. It appears like a case of the pot calling the kettle black. I am shocked by the lack of proof reading and quality control at Time. In the article not once but twice Time magazine refers to the 787 Dreamliner as …

This Easter weekend is turning out special for Bangalore Aviation. New templateI have switched to using the Arthemia theme template and then doing customisation to it. Thanks to Michael Nguyen for the original template. You can download the Arthemia Blogger theme here. New lookThe new template retains the same width but gives more space to the main articles and less …

On Friday 10 April 2009, Air France will take delivery of the 777th Boeing 777 aircraft manufactured by Boeing, and the 54th Boeing 777 in the Air France fleet. The new aircraft will be registered F-GZND and will be the first aircraft in the fleet to sport the new livery of Air France. For fellow spotters, the aircraft is expected …