Tag Archives: Kingfisher Airlines

Our topic of this week comes thanks to the financial troubles at Kingfisher Airlines. The flights of the financially ailing carrier have been disrupted across its India network due to striking engineers. As per media reports, striking employees, after hearing that some employees received salaries, manhandled fellow employees, beat up a management executive, held passengers hostage aboard a flight for …

Less than a week ago the Union Minister of Civil Aviation Mr. Ajit Singh asked Air India to submit a plan to enhance its share in the domestic passenger market, with the ultimate goal of being number one. This desire, against a continuing decline in domestic air passenger numbers. In August only 4.369 million passengers travelled, down 4% from the 4.537 million of …

This has been an interesting week for civil aviation in India. Last Saturday saw the much delayed arrival of Air India’s first Boeing 787 Dreamliner at New Delhi. The national carrier had taken delivery of VT-ANH just two days earlier. See a video of the 787 being assembled. Very early, yesterday morning, September 13, saw the arrival of the new …

Carrying 1.226 million passengers in July 2012, Gurgaon based IndiGo pipped the Jet Airways’ group (Jet Airways and JetKonnect) at 1.207 million, to become the largest domestic carrier in India. IndiGo’s market share has grown to 27.02%, at the expense of a failing Kingfisher Airlines whose market share has declined to a mere 3.44%. The country’s aviation regulator reports based …

Beleaguered full service carrier Kingfisher Airlines has served notice of its dire straits, by reporting a massive Rs. 963.3 Crore net pre-tax loss in the first quarter of fiscal year 2012~2013. Even as Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya wrote a controversial letter to Kingfisher’s employees asking them to work without pay for the next few months, it appears that Kingfisher …

Yesterday, Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya sent out a letter to his employees, ostensibly in response to the industrial action by its employees earlier this week that led to the cancellation of more than 30 flights out of Mumbai and Delhi. Unlike earlier letters which were much softer, this time, Dr. Mallya did not mince words. He informs employees of …

The Press Trust of India is reporting that disgruntled employees of the financially ailing Kingfisher Airlines went on a wildcat strike at Mumbai and Delhi earlier today which led to the cancellation of over 30 flights, with ripple disruptions across the airline’s national network. The protesters were mostly pilots and engineers who are protesting non-payment of their salaries for many …

This is an interesting snippet and for the interest of plane spotters. At present, the two leading airlines in India are Jet Airways and IndiGo; and they also happen to be aggressively adding aircraft to their fleet. By sheer coincidence, the registration sequences for the new aircraft for both these airlines happen to be very similar. Jet’s new Boeing 737s are …

A few days ago, Mr. Rahul Bhatia, co-promoter of Indian low cost carrier IndiGo, stated in public, grievances, that many in the Indian airline industry believe in private. That the government is not behaving in a fair manner and keeping alive national carrier Air India on life support with massive bailouts of public money, preferential treatment in route allocation, etc. …

The following was posted as a guest post over at The Wandering Aramean, a great travel blog written by Seth Miller which also doubles as a travel tool site. Be sure to check his site out, and stay tuned, as we will have some guest content from him this week. When India’s Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines, and SpiceJet all recently …

When Kingfisher Airlines, once India’s second largest domestic airline, reported a Rs. 2,328 Crore (1 Crore = 10 Million) net post-tax loss for fiscal year 2012, it was simply an affirmation of the dire straits that a once proud airline has fallen into. Of the Rs. 2,328 Crore net loss, a whopping Rs. 1151.5 Crores were lost in the fourth …

The income tax department has frozen two of Kingfisher Airline’s bank accounts for alleged non-payment of dues. However the airline has clarified in a statement The IT department attached two of our bank accounts on May 24th which was not in accordance with the speaking order of the Hon’ble IT Appelate tribunal during the hearing. Subsequently, in a written order …

The image above shows the load factors at each of India’s airlines. Considering that Kingfisher has shrunk so much, it is surprising that their seat factor has not elevated past its pre-downsize levels. The image above shows on-time performance for April. Two interesting things to note about the data. First, Kingfisher’s OTP has come back down to earth. In earlier …

Continuing our weekly interactive post where we seek your views, this week we discuss Kingfisher Airlines. Whether due to his own poor planning and execution, or as some conspiracy theorists will have you believe, there is no doubt, in the case of Kingfisher Airlines, Dr. Vijay Mallya has been systematically pushed against the wall. Kingfisher Airlines is now a weight …

When full service carrier Kingfisher Airlines enacted a latest round of route and capacity cuts last week, it represented simply the latest evidence that the carrier is headed for bankruptcy and is in a death spiral. Part of the drawdown involved the cancellation of almost all of Kingfisher’s international operations, which occurred after the airlines lessors began demanding the return …

The following speech was given by the CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA), Tony Tyler, at the India Aviation 2012 Air Show in Hyderabad. Our comments are included in the quote and are italicized and colored red. Good morning and thank you for the invitation to address the opening session of this important event. Congratulations to the Ministry …

The international operations of financially beleaguered Kingfisher Airlines have all but collapsed as lessors have commenced demanding “re-delivery” (industry parlance for return) of the wide body Airbus A330-200s which constitute the mainstay of the international flights. The actions are ironic as Dr. Mallya acquired Capt. Gopinath promoted Air Deccan to hasten Kingfisher’s entry in to international operations. The Air Deccan …

Will the majority of future of India-Gulf flights go through Dubai? The first 9 months of 2012 will see a major re-shuffling by India’s airlines on the heavily trafficked India-Gulf sector, as airlines respond to higher fuel prices and a poor regulatory environment, and Air India continues to re-align its network strategy. Air India will be enacting the most significant …

The damning evidence against Kingfisher continues to mount, as a new report from the UK High Court claims that the embattled airline owes $21.6 million (Rs. 109.06 Crore) to the Bank of Scotland for overdue lease payments on 10 ATR 72-500 aircraft. The action was brought by Bank of Scotland on behalf of a consortium of lenders against Kingfisher parent …

The past few days have been admittedly brutal for Kingfisher. Whether it was suspending flights entirely from Kolkata, or dealing with a particularly critical journalist, the events that befell Kingfisher stopped just short of catastrophic. The immediate pressure appears to have been relieved by loans from State Bank of India, which will go further onto the hook for Kingfisher to …