Airlines Deals

CAE Inc. (CGT | charts | news | PowerRating), a provider of simulation and modeling technologies for civil aviation and military, said on Monday it agreed to supply Air Deccan of India with an A320 full- flight simulator and a CAE Simfinity A320 Integrated Procedures Trainer. The contract is estimated to be worth C$20 million.

In addition, CAE has contracted to give five years of simulator maintenance and support services to Air Deccan.

The simulator is scheduled to be delivered in the summer of 2007 to Air Deccan’s new Bangalore training centre. CAE, as of now, has sold eight full-flight simulators for fiscal 2007, the company said.

The Saint-Laurent, Canada-based company’s simulator A320FFS is equipped with CAE Tropos II Enhanced visual system that takes full advantage of satellite imagery to create realistic virtual environments for training pilots.

CGT is currently trading at $7.37 unchanged from Thursday’s close on a volume of 7,400 shares.

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Low-cost carrier Air Deccan, has announced the opening of bookings for its ATR sectors for the period September 1, 2006 to October 29, 2006.

Air Deccan will be opening the bookings on July 16, 2006, Sunday 8:00 am onwards, across the country. The bookings to be opened will include tickets priced at Rs. 99/-, Rs. 299/- & Rs. 500/- (exclusive of taxes) and above.

ATR Sectors on which booking will be opened are from Delhi to the Northern cities, Kolkata to eastern and Northeastern cities, from Mumbai to western destinations, from Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Thiruvananthapuram to other southern cities. Air Deccan has a fleet of 21 ATR aircraft, operating 170 flights a day.

Air Deccan tickets can be booked via Online - www.airdeccan.net , Air Deccan airport counters, Telephone - 24 / 7 call centre 39008888 (prefix city code if dialing from a mobile), Ticketing offices at Bangalore & Chennai, 260 Reliance Webstores across 104 cities in India and also through Club HP petrol pumps in 7 states in India.

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Air Deccan, India’s No.1 low cost airline, today, announced the opening of bookings for its ATR sectors for the period September 1, 2006 to October 29, 2006. Air Deccan will be opening the bookings on July 16, 2006, Sunday 8:00 am onwards, across the country. The bookings to be opened will include tickets priced at Rs. 99/-, Rs. 299/- & Rs. 500/- (exclusive of taxes) and above.

ATR Sectors on which booking will be opened

North (Ex-Delhi)

Amritsar, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Gwalior, Indore, Jabalpur, Jaipur, Jammu, Kanpur and Lucknow

East (Ex-Kolkata)

Agartala, Aizawl, Baghdogra, Bhubaneshwar, Dibrugarh, Guwahati, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi and Silchar

West (Ex-Mumbai)

Ahmedabad, Aurangabad, Belgaum, Bhavnagar, Baroda, Goa, Jamnagar, Kolhapur, Nashik, Pune and Rajkot

South (Ex-Bangalore)

Belgaum, Chennai, Coimbatore, Cochin, Calicut, Goa, Hubli, Hyderabad, Mangalore, Trivandrum

South (Ex-Chennai)

Bangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Madurai, Trichy, Tuticorin, Vizag, Vijayawada

South (Ex-Hyderabad)

Bangalore, Chennai, Goa, Nagpur, Pune, Rajahmundry, Tirupati, Vizag and Vijayawada

South (Ex-Trivandrum)

Bangalore

Mr John Kuruvilla, Chief Revenue Officer, Air Deccan said, “We aim to cater to every single person within the country by offering a large network through our ATR sectors which connect metros and big cities to smaller regions of the country. This, coupled with our innovative and dynamic pricing of tickets will assist us in reaching closer to our vision of making flying common in India.”

“Our fleet comprises 21 ATRs at present we have 170 ATR flights a day connecting the length and breadth of the country.”

Air Deccan tickets can be booked through

Online - www.airdeccan.net

Telephone - 24 / 7 call centre 39008888 (prefix city code if dialing from a mobile)

Air Deccan airport counters

Ticketing offices at Bangalore & Chennai

Travel Agents across India

260 Reliance Webstores across 104 cities in India

Club HP petrol pumps in 7 states in India

SMS - Message to 676723

The updated flight schedule will be available at http://www.airdeccan.net/air/CurrentSchedule.asp 16 July 2006 onwards.

India’s No.1 low cost airline and the third largest airline in the country, Air Deccan has the largest network in India today covering 55 airports plying 265 flights a day. The airline currently operates a brand new fleet of 14 Airbus A 320 Aircraft with an average age of 1.5 years and 21 ATR Turboprop Aircraft. Since its inception in 2003, Air Deccan has flown over 5 million passengers and the number is growing everyday.

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Air Deccan has initiated talks with GMR Hyderabad International Airport Ltd (GHIAL) for opening a full-fledged engineering facility at the upcoming airport near here.

Mr R. Krishnaswamy, Head (Corporate Planning) of Air Deccan, said the low-cost carrier was also planning to open a pilot training facility and hangars at the new airport.

Addressing a press conference here on Friday after launching the second service to the temple town, he said the company was confident that the Rs 7-crore engineering support facility at Chennai would be operational by February next.

“We have taken possession of the 65,000 square feet of land allotted to us. We have identified the construction player and works on the project would start on August 1,” he said.

Reiterating the company’s strategy of connecting the towns in the hinterlands, Mr Krishnaswamy said the airline had launched services to almost all the serviceable airports. It operated 265 flights a day, connecting 55 destinations.

More options

The airline had plans to strengthen intra-Andhra Pradesh connectivity, by offering more options for the passengers on existing destinations. “We would like to connect other major cities like Chennai, Vijayawada and Visakhapatnam to Tirupati,” he said.

Replying to a question, he, however, said that the market was not yet ready for launching direct flights to Tirupati from metro cities.

Special darshan

Mr S Raman, Senior Manager (Air Traffic Control) of Tirupati Airport, said the Tirumala-Tirupati Devesthanam (TTD) had agreed to allow the air passengers to have a special darshan at an appointed time. “This will help the passengers save time and effort,” he said.

The airline, too, made this a USP for selling the product. “The new flight service will take them to Tirupati in the morning. They can have darshan and come back to Hyderabad in the evening service,” he said.

Fares this sector (one way) would begin at Rs 1,400 and it could reach up to Rs 3,200, depending on the demand.

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A day after this year’s Budget, I happened to be in Bangalore for a post-Budget analysis event. Among others, Capt GR Gopinath, managing director of Air Deccan, was also present. Till then, I had never flown Air Deccan. As soon as the discussions got over, the entire audience gathered around Gopinath, praising him for connecting hitherto unknown towns and cities by air and asking him to add many many more. And till Gopinath, in his trademark open shirt-informal jacket look, sat inside his car, businessmen did not let go. Clearly they, like many Indian travellers, were beneficiaries of his business of low-cost air travel and that explained his near-cult status at that event.
Air Deccan and other low-cost airlines have rapidly cornered over 20% market share. I, therefore, decided to travel Air Deccan on a trip to Kolkata a few weeks ago. In the few months prior to my travel, I had received several mails from agitated passengers on how they had not been treated well, seen several news reports of angry consumers nearly beating

Air Deccan staff in a few incidents of flight delays, and how there was a growing public perception that low-cost airlines were consumer unfriendly.

My journey to Kolkata was like any other airlines. And for the cheap fare I was paying, I did not mind paying for the tea and snacks at all (although many passengers complained they were way too high). The flight tookoff on time and landed on time, too.

On the way back, I boarded the flight in the evening, and after being in the air for over an hour, got a jolt when the captain in broken English, mumbled: “Due to a technical snag, we have to go back to Kolkata. One of the windows has shattered!”

After a few minutes of complete shock and prayers, passengers began asking questions of the cabin crew on what had happened. The crew had no answers. The captain never came back with any further announcement, leaving passengers at the mercy of fate. When the aircraft wobbled back at Kolkata airport, the cabin crew actually announced: “Thanks for having a pleasant flight with us.”

There was no Air Deccan official waiting to explain to passengers what the next course of action would be. A junior attendant asked all passengers to collect their bags from the conveyor belt and move to the reservation counter. I first went and bought myself a ticket for another airline, and then proceeded to the reservation counter.

While angry passengers kept waiting to get an audience with a senior official to know when they could get another flight, an official came out and said rather curtly: “Sorry, the flight is cancelled. You can take your refund and go.” He would have been lynched, were it not for the presence of armed CISF jawans.

I proceeded to the counter to get my ticket cancelled. I was told that because it had been booked online, the refund too would be online. I waited 10 minutes to get the online ratification. After two hours, when I returned to board the other airline, I still found streams of passengers from the Air Deccan flight waiting for their refund. Some who tried to agitate before Air Deccan officials were told: “Shout more!”.

Of course, many would not have been able to fly that night and would have had to pay for their stay, as low-cost airlines do not pay for stay in the event of a cancellation.

Here is my take. Low-cost airlines can be “no frills”, but not “consumer unfriendly.” A consumer will put up without a nicely packed meal, but not with such pathetic behaviour from an airline’s staff. More important, in this case it was no ordinary cancellation. A window shattering inside a cockpit is a grave breach of safety. It was an emergency landing that the aircraft had to make, and the onus on an airline to provide safe travel does not diminish in the event of it being low-cost.

Rather than going out of its way to calm passengers and help them overcome the shock, the airline staff traumatised them even more. The Indian consumer has brought down many a big multinational because, while he loves low-cost, he can also be extremely punishing of low service. Low-cost airlines like Air Deccan must realise this hard reality. Till then, Captain Gopinath, you have lost one passenger in me.

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Deccan Aviation Ltd, which runs discount carrier Air Deccan, said on Thursday it would raise fuel surcharge to Rs 500 a ticket from Rs 300 with effect from July 7.

The company cited rising aviation turbine fuel prices as the reason for the increase.

Earlier this week, India’s top domestic carrier Jet Airways Ltd also announced a similar increase.

“In the last one year there has been a 36 percent increase in fuel prices in India,” Warwick Brady, Air Deccan’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Fuel charges make up almost 40 per cent of an airline’s operating cost.

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Low-cost airline Air Deccan on Friday introduced an early morning flight to the temple town of Tirupati, enabling devotees to have `darshan’ of the Lord and return the same day.

The daily flight will leave here at 6.10 a.m. and reach Tirupati at 7.20 a.m. It would prove to be a convenient and time-saving option, Krishnaswamy, chief, corporate planning, told press persons at Tirupati airport after the 72-seater landed there.

He said devotees after completing their `darshan’ could return to the airport to catch the 3.35 p.m. Air Deccan flight to Hyderabad which lands here 4.45 p.m. The existing Hyderabad-Tirupati plane, taking off at 2 p.m. and landing at Tirupati at 3.20 p.m., would serve devotees who wish to have early morning darshan (`suprabhata darshan’), by staying overnight.

He said the airline hoped to inter-connect the other major cities like Chennai, Vijayawada, Visakhapatnam in future.

The starting fare for the early morning flight is Rs. 1,416, if booked in advance. The airliner would charge 30 per cent less than its competitor, Indian Airlines. Advance reservations could be made through the airlines website, www.airdeccan.net, and 24/7 all-India call centre 39008888.

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Kingfisher Airlines has scrapped the plan for an IPO as of now. The company was planning to raise about USD 200 million through an IPO in 2006, reports Economic Times.

With the volatility in the market, the company would not consider this route for at least another year, said a company official.

Kingfisher Airlines has the paid-up capital of over Rs 370 crore. Group shareholding in the company, a 100% UB group subsidiary, will be diluted only when the company gets a proper valuation.

The IPO was a major success as it was heavily oversubscribed Air Deccan, however, managed to scrape through in a volatile market in March. The other airline listed in the stock exchange is the Delhi-based SpiceJet.
Large players in the civil aviation industry, who have recently opted for the IPO route, include Jet Airways and Air Deccan.

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India’s Deccan Aviation Ltd., which runs discount carrier Air Deccan, said on Thursday it would raise fuel surcharge to 500 rupees a ticket from 300 rupees with effect from July 7.

The company cited rising aviation turbine fuel prices as the reason for the increase.

Earlier this week, India’s top domestic carrier Jet Airways Ltd. also announced a similar increase.

“In the last one year there has been a 36 percent increase in fuel prices in India,” Warwick Brady, Air Deccan’s chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Fuel charges make up almost 40 percent of an airline’s operating cost.

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India’s first low-cost no frill airline, Air Deccan, has made a marginal increase of Rs 200 in the fuel surcharge on all fares to all routes from Friday.

The new surcharge will be applicable to all bookings made on or after July 7 and will not apply to tickets that have been booked or purchased in advance, a company spokesman said in a release.

“In the last one year there has been a 36 per cent increase in the fuel prices in India. Tax on fuel has also increased by 26 to 38 per cent. It is imperative for us to revise the fuel surcharge as the fuel cost of an aircraft contributes approximately 40 per cent to the total airline cost,” Chief Operating Officer of the airline Warwick Brady was quoted in the release as saying.

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