Govt says Boeing to pay over USD 500 mln to Air India

Boeing Co has agreed to pay little over USD 500 million as compensation to state-run carrier Air India for delayed aircraft delivery, a senior government official told reporters on the sidelines of an industry event.

Cash-strapped Air India is negotiating for more compensation from Boeing, said Prashant Sukul, joint secretary, ministry of civil aviation.

Deliveries on the national carrier's 2005 order for as many as 50 long-range Boeing jets worth about USD 6 billion has been delayed by more than three years.

Last month a source had told Reuters Air India was seeking nearly USD 1 billion from Boeing to compensate for the delays Read More

Read More...

Kingfisher Air to cut back overseas flights

(Reuters) - Kingfisher Airlines will cut back its overseas flights as the debt-crippled and cash-strapped carrier looks to slash costs and attract funding from wary bankers and sceptical investors.

Cutting its costly and loss-making international flights is seen as a necessary step by industry analysts if Kingfisher is to salvage its flagging business. It might not however, be enough to bring bankers back to the table.

"This is absolutely a good move by Kingfisher and an overdue one," said an aviation equity analyst in Mumbai. "There was no scale in the overseas business and it was bleeding cash. But until there is an upturn in the domestic business too, bankers will still stay away."

Shares in the airline rose as much as 3 percent after the news it was cutting its loss-making overseas operations, which analysts had been advocating for some time. The shares later retreated to fall 0.5 percent. The stock has lost around 57 percent of its value since last April.

Kingfisher, which has slashed its operations as pilots have walked out and authorities froze its bank accounts, said in a statement it is urgently searching for working capital. Foreign investors have shown an interest in the carrier, it added.

"We would like to confirm that we are curtailing our wide-body overseas operations that are bleeding heavily," the airline said on Wednesday, adding that it had already returned one Airbus A330-200 to its UK lessor as a result.

Wide-body aircraft are used by Kingfisher to fly to the UK, Thailand, Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong. The airline provided no details on its international flights to regional destinations such as Sri Lanka.

"Positive and immediate action is being taken on all fronts to cut costs," the airline said.

Kingfisher posted a loss of $90 million in the quarter to end-December. International operations accounted for more than 70 percent of the airline's losses before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization during the quarter.

The carrier, which has never turned a profit, has become the poster child of India's struggling airline industry that is saddled with high fuel costs, stiff competition and low fares.

The airline, which has debt of about $1.3 billion, needs at least $400 million soon to keep flying, according to the Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation, an industry consultancy Read More

Read More...

Delhi: Kingfisher Airlines

New Delhi: The ground staff and technicians of cash-strapped Kingfisher Airlines at Delhi's Indira Gandhi International Airport are on a strike.

Thursday is the second day of their strike against non-payment on salaries for months.

Kingfisher Airlines, owned by Indian liquor baron Vijay Mallya, is in talks with two foreign carriers, including International Airlines Group (IAG), the owner of British Airways and Iberia, for a potential rescue package, a report said.

This could pave the way for IAG to take a minority stake in the troubled Indian airline, a report by 'The Times' said.

Earlier, State Bank of India (SBI), the lead lender to Kingfisher Airlines said it will not consider any fresh loans for the debt-laden carrier until it raises new equity itself.

Read More...

Hike in airport charges won’t affect airlines: DIAL

New Delhi: Delhi International Airport Limited (DIAL) today justified seeking an eight-time hike in airport charges, saying it would not affect the airlines much and would help the Airports Authority of India (AAI) gain more revenue.

“If the proposed hike of 774 percent by DIAL is approved by Airports Economic Regulatory Authority, then the aeronautical charges would increase only by 100-150 percent for various airlines,” DIAL CFO Siddarth Kapur told PTI here.

In the past five years, Delhi airport alone has contributed about Rs 2,200 crore to AAI

“This would not be too high, as currently Delhi and Mumbai airports have the least charges among the top 50 airports of the world,” he said.

At a meeting here last month, airline representatives including those from Air India and several major foreign carriers, had opposed the hike proposed by DIAL saying Delhi was a profitable airport but it was badly structured.

The representatives, who also belonged to Lufthansa, Air France, British Airways, Emirates Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific, had said the increase would lead to a drastic fall in number of passengers.

Countering the arguments, Kapur said the demand for such a hike in aeronautical charges was “not to earn supernormal profits … These are reasonable charges as these have not been increased in the last ten years, except once by 10 percent in 2009.”

He said it was being sought as per the concessionaire agreement signed with the government and claimed that the User Development Fee (UDF) would rise by an average of only about Rs 400-500.

The DIAL official said the increase will not only help the airport operator which has registered a loss of Rs 1,300 crore since it took over the Delhi airport from the AAI in 2006, but also help the state-run airports body to earn more revenue.

As per the estimates, after the revision of current aeronautical tariff by 774 percent, the AAI — which earned Rs 581 crore in the FY 2010-11, would earn about Rs 2,800 crore by financial year 2013-14 from Delhi airport itself.

The AAI has emerged as a major beneficiary of the public-private-partnership deals of Mumbai and Delhi airports, Kapur said, adding, it has 45.99 per cent and 38.7 percent revenue share in DIAL and Mumbai International Airport Limited (MIAL) respectively.

For financial year 2011, AAI has earned Rs 462 crore as navigational revenue from Delhi compared to Landing and Parking charges for DIAL which stood at Rs 337 crore, as per their annual report.

The revenue share from DIAL and MIAL was helping AAI to fund the growth of other metro and non-metro airports like Kolkata and Chennai. The project cost for modernisation of Kolkata airport is Rs 1,617 crore while for Chennai Rs 1,808 crore. Of the total of Rs 3,425 crore, 65 percent of the total fund has been accrued from the revenue share from DIAL alone.

In the past five years, Delhi alone has contributed about Rs 2,200 crore to AAI which can be used to building a terminal of 22 million passengers capacity, the official said. DIAL is also mandated to build a new Air Traffic Control (ATC) tower at the cost of Rs 350 crore.

PTI

Read More...

Kejriwal returns from airport to vote, but name not on list

New Delhi After urging the entire country to vote, Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal created a flutter this morning when he left his Ghaziabad home to attend election meetings in Goa without casting his vote. Strident criticism from various quarters forced him to return from the airport — only to be told that his name did not figure in the voters’ list and neither did those of his family members. None of them could finally cast their vote.

He apologised, even as his colleague Kumar Vishwas launched a tirade against Congress president Sonia Gandhi and General Secretary Rahul Gandhi for not being registered voters of their respective Parliamentary constituencies.

“In a country where the prime minister himself is a back-door entrant how can we expect front-door entrants to be heard. Neither Rahul nor Sonia voted in Amethi or Rae Bareily because they are not even registered in the constituencies from where they won. Why then is Arvind Kejriwal not voting such a big issue? He was working for the greater good of the nation. How is it that the entire family, which has been voting all these years, was deleted from the list?” said Vishwas.

Kejriwal’s departure in the morning, his hasty retreat and the final inability to vote elicited snide comments on Twitter from Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh. “Great protectors of probity in public life. Anna doesn’t go to vote. Kejriwal doesn’t care to see whether he is registered as voter. Obviously, Team Anna doesn’t practise what it preaches! They should clarify whether they believe in Democracy or not,” Singh tweeted.

Former IPS officer and Kejriwal’s fellow member of the India Against Corruption core committee, Kiran Bedi jumped to his rescue, tweeting about how absence of names on the voters list is a wider problem and it is time the Election Commission — top officials of which Team Anna met just a few days back demanding right to reject — put the lists on the Internet so that people can check in advance whether their names are included.

Kejriwal left his Indirapuram home for the airport in the morning saying he could not cast his vote because of prior commitments in Goa but his family would. When he returned to the designated polling booth he said: “I was feeling guilty while leaving in the morning. Then, from the airport I called up the organisers of two meetings who said they were willing to postpone them. That is why I came back. Now I find my name is not on the voters’ list. It was there earlier, I have always cast my vote and that is why I did not check beforehand,” said Kejriwal.

Kejriwal would “take up” the matter of the voters’ list on his return from Goa, he said.

Umesh Sinha, Chief Electoral officer (UP), said he would inquire into the matter. He added that the voters should ensure beforehand that their names were in the list.

Read More...