1. HERALD May 12: "Patel, Chowdhury favour lowering taxes on ATF". This represents one of the first known coordinated efforts to attack the high cost structure of Indian aviation as one is the civil aviation minister and the other is the tourism minister. Both plan to jointly meet the Finance Minister and later the Home Minister. The approach to the latter would be for cutting immigration queues at airports. One point in the article which seems to have a direct bearing on Goa is the following:
< Besides the ATF issue, the two ministers also discussed the progress made in upgradation of international and domestic airports, especially to receive international scheduled flights where charters are allowed to land at present".> The meaning of this sentence needs to be deciphered! Also what about meeting the Defence Minister? See last item in this post! 2. While on the subject of cost cutting, the following link may be of interest: http://www.business-standard.com/common/storypage.php?hpFlag=Y&chklogin=N&au tono=188792&leftnm=lmnu2&lselect=0&leftindx=2 <Sops for flights on non-busy routes planned Bipin Chandran & Surajeet Das Gupta / New Delhi May 13, 2005 In a move aimed at decongesting busy airports and busy air routes, the ministry of civil aviation is drawing up plans to regulate air traffic in the country. As part of this plan, flights which operate on non-busy routes and airports will be provided incentives.> 3. HERALD again. May 13, 2005: "Govt considering IPO for AI and IA, LS told". This is about the intial public offering of PSU airline stock. The Minister also informed the lower house that the scheme for air travel concession to senior citizens stands amended as of April 4, 2005. Now there is NO need to purchase tickets 7 days before departure. 4. Yet another one in HERALD! May 13: "Kingfisher Airlines to break even in first year". It has leased 4 aircraft to launch operations. Initially there are to be double daily flights between Bangalore and Mumbai. This will rise to three by May 20. On June 6 there will be three daily flights between Bangalore and Delhi. By July end this will increase to 6 between Mumbai and Delhi. "We'll have 11 planes flying by December each logging 11 hours per day." A Rs 120 cr contract has been signed with IA for ground handling, engineering and maintenance support. Intriguingly, Kingfisher also plans to "buy surplus flight kilometres" that IA operates on non-profitable routes to keep (its own?) overheads and operating costs low. 5. A fly in the ointment? TIMES OF INDIA, May 13: "Jet set to start LoC service for army". This is to be an exclusive agreement to ferry army personnel on the Thoise-Delhi route wherein Thoise is a restricted area. In my books, Jet is the Reliance of Indian aviation. Its premium pricing strategy may depend in future on slow progress on relief from aviation infrastructure bottlenecks. By establishing a direct line of communication with the military, Jet may have got the jump on others in influencing (read "delaying") the lifting of military restrictions esp on lucrative sectors like Mumbai-Goa. Clever, right?
