Pilots in India often fail alcohol tests

Around 50 pilots each year in India are being grounded because they had consumed alcohol before taking a flight, the country's civil aviation authorities.

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), a body controlling airline operations in India, said dozens of pilots are found to have consumed alcohol during routine pre-medical tests every year.

India is one of the fastest growing aviation markets in the world with dozens of new airlines competing with each other everyday, often resulting in pilots forced to fly at short notices.

The country has about 4,500-5,000 commercial pilots, and another 2,500 are undergoing training. Civil aviation rules specify that pilots and cabin crew cannot consume alcohol 12 hours before taking a flight. A pilot can be grounded for three months and he can lose his license if he repeats the mistake again. Some times flights have to be canceled because of drunken pilots.

CRJ 700 in India

The first CRJ 700 Aircraft entered in to service in India with Air India Regional. The 70- seater is flying six days a week between Delhi-Raipur & Delhi-Vishakhapattanam. Load factor is repoetrd to be nearly 80 percent. With Increasing jet fuel prices & drastic decrease in Air travel, lets wait & watch for how long it will able to have a high load factor?

Deccan with Kingfisher...

A few months back I promised that I will review Deccan website. To be very honest I didn't found any thing different or special to share. Every body knows it now has a feel of Kingfisher but, thats only the feel & nothing like Kingfisher. A jingle was there initially & I could not find it now. Infact, I downloaded it but, its not peppy. They have removed the history of the airline from their website, very sad. They have decreased the check-in weight to 13 kg. I have not flown in Deccan since, its merger with Kingfisher but, some of my close friends don't give healthy review for it. Same old story of being late. Now, the latest about it what I feared earlier. Deccan will cease to exist.

Aircraft Fractional Ownership & India...

I was wondering why I have never posted about any of the charted airlines, even though i did my internship in a charted airline. Let me break this unsaid rule. With so much hype of B-jets (entering in India, Tata has stake in this) & Netjets offering what is known as Aircraft Fractional Ownership (AFO). Being the only person in India (i think so) who has done a project on Aircraft Fractional Ownership (I did a my Internship with Club One Air on the project titled - "Feasibility of Aircraft Fractional Ownership in India"), i believe its my duty to tell my readers about this AFO thing. The concept of AFO can best known on Netjets website, as this company introduced the concept to the world. I would like to cover issues pertaining to AFO in specifically in India. These issues are a roadblock to this concept-

1. Inappropriate Infrastructure.
2. Charted Flights are not allowed to take off on busy timings.
3. Secondary preference given to charted flights.
4. Even Indian Corporates love to have discounts in AFO, how these players will overcome that.
5. Indians dont love to share thier vehicles, how they will share an aircraft.

Well I will not discuss my findings but, these are the million dollar question to be answered.

Shutting Down HAL Airport...

Pressure on the government to keep Bangalore's HAL airport running is beginning to gain ground. While much of the angst is over traffic snarls, the arguments are substantive and deserve attention. The government on it's part is committed to close the current airport. It has signed a concessional agreement (CA) with BIAL where one of the terms is to not allow any other airport within 150 kms radius of the new one.

Article by Samuel Jacob

To know more please click on the title, for complete article.

History of low-cost airlines in India...

Knowing about my passion for Airlines one of dear friend send me a link. It had all the latest information about the low cost airlines in India. The ailines covered in that article are as follows -

• Air Deccan
• JetLite
• GoAir
• SpiceJet
• Indigo
• Air India Express
• Jagson Airlines
• MDLR Airlines
• Paramount Airways

I have not even changed the title of the article. Plz click on the title to read brief history of the above said airlines with present situations. Its a beautiful article on rediff.com

Freedom... I Doubt...

Ever noticed the Registration of Aircrafts in which you fly. There is one thing common in all & that’s all the registration starts from VT. So what actually does that mean. In good olden days, I am talking about British Raj period, all the aircrafts at that point were registered as Viceroy Territory. The Irony is that it still holds good & today aircrafts are registered for the short form of the same that’s our VT. None of the associated authorities have considered to think about that. We may have got freedom some 60 odd years back but, are we really free???