Turkish airline plane crashes in Amsterdam

The Turkish plane broke down at Amsterdam airport -

A Turkish Airlines plane with 135 passengers aboard has crashed on landing at Amsterdam’s Schiphol international airport. The Turkish plane broke into three parts when it hit the ground. It was Flight 1951 and was a 737-800 aircraft, the airport said. The plane had departed earlier from Istanbul.

Fares drop

How big is this drop?

Finally there is a drop in the prices of air tickets. Every one was waiting for it specially after the huge decrease in the price of aviation turbine fuel (ATF).  

On some routes the drop is almost of 50%. But still i can not understand one thing why only basic fare which excludes the taxes is decreased even though fuel surcharge is the part of taxes and was imposed after steep increase in the price of ATF. Also, this discount will be available on few of the tickets. 

Atleast some relief for the travellers.

Aviation aircraft from NAL

Some thing new in Indian aviation sector:

Boeing and Airbus should get ready for the Indian Vimana. National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL)  has entered into a collaboration with Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M) to produce general aviation aircraft. This will be the first public-private joint venture in the aircraft design in India.

NAL will be building a 5 seater aircraft with Mahindra Aerospace Limited (MAL) which is a part of Mahindra and Mahindra (M&M). Both the companies are hopping of giving the first test flight by end of next year.

This kind of joint venture will be opening new doors for other companies to invest in aviation sector which may lead to some unique reasearch and development. Till now we are totally depending upon other foreign companies for any kind of aircrafts, but these kind of JV will give us some hope to build our own aircraft which can be used on a small scale.

Hope to see an Indian competer for Boeing and Airbus in coming years.

get set gooooooooooooo

Air fares should be reduced now

Why airlines are not reducing the tickets rates in India even though aviation turbine fuel (ATF) have fallen dramatically in the past 3 months. In November 2005 Domestic fuel surcharge of 200 Rs was introduced by the airlines at that time ATF/litre was 35,761 Rs and now in December 2008 Domestic fuel surcharge is around 2000 Rs when ATF/litre is 32,691 Rs. Then why airlines are not decreasing the fares?

Over the period all major airlines big or small had faced major losses and this might be the time for them to cover some losses by not decreasing the fares. Also there is a steep fall in domestic passengers traffic due which flights are flying with vacant seats.  These might be the reasons why we are not seeing any drop in the fares.

happy flying

Air traffic hits a low

Why Indian domestic traffic is decreasing now? There is a decrease of around 21% from the last year’s traffic. Price is playing a big factor in this. Last year flights were cheap as compare to this year and also there is a decrease in the number foreign tourists visiting the country.
According to the airline companies worst is yet to come in the January to March quarter as travel could be low due to combined factors like exams and overall slowdown in economy.
But there might be some good news for the consumers as airlines are looking for decreasing the rates over all sectors. Already rates are reduced by around 300 Rs due to decrease in the fuel surcharge.
Let’s hope for some more…..

Overbooking – help

In my last post i discussed about what is overbooking and why its being implemented. In this one i will focus on saving ourself from the problem of overbooking. Following are the few of steps to be taken care of ….

1. Try to report in as early as possible. A customer should report minimum of 60 minutes in advance for domestic flights and 120 minutes for international flights. As if you already have a boarding pass and your baggage is checked in, nobody can ask you to stay grounded.

2. E-check is another smart option. Once you have checked in online, you have your boarding pass in hand and no one can bump you off.

Try to follow above mentioned points to save yourself from the problem of overbooking specially in peak the season.

happy flying

Overbooking on airlines is now a reality

Overbooking as the name explains means over booking of flight tickets by airlines. For example there are 100 seats in a flight and all seats are booked, that means no more booking should be allowed BUT all most all airlines allow passengers to book some tickets even though there is not seats in a flight. This is called as overbooking. This concept is increasing day by day both in international and domestic flight. This is one of the ways for airlines to cut down on their losses.

Still more to come ……….

Booking a flight

I was planning my trip and for that i was looking for some flights. As usual i tried from online booking website instead of going through an agent or going directly to the airport.

But to my surprise the price of tickets were very high. Then i thought to cross check with the rate of other website and air lines own website. There was not much different except some extra service charge by the website.

Then i found that there is huge increase in the prices only. So next time if you are booking a flight then don’t be surprised to see the high prices of the tickets.

Air Travel getting costlier

Slowly slowly things are going back to the old days when traveling by air seems to be possible only for high class of the society. Day by day there is an increase in the air fare. The price of low cost airlines are coming close the prices of premium airlines and prices of premium airlines going out of the reach of the common man.

There are couple of reasons for that.

1. 30% – 40% increase the price of aviation fuel over the period of time.

2. Poor infrastructure, which is not able to hold the demand due which airlines are facing lot of problems. Lack of multiple runways in the airport forcing plans to be in air for longer duration of time which adds in the over all flying cost.

3.  Increase in the demand of expert pilots and skilled labor which leads to high salary of pilots.

4. Increase in the losses of the airline are forcing them to increase the price of the air tickets.

All these and some other points are collectively responsible for the increase in the prices of the air tickets and this trend is more or less same through out the world.