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Aviation
News
Air
Sahara slashes Apex fares
New
Delhi: Air Sahara on Monday launched its "Surprice"
scheme introducing the first advance purchase (APEX)
return scheme and reducing the fares by almost 30
per cent. The move is seems to be targeting AC two-tier
train passengers. As per the scheme introduced mainly
on the metro sectors, a Delhi-Mumbai-Delhi APEX ticket
would now cost Rs 4444 and a Delhi-Kolkata-Delhi ticket
Rs 5555, compared with the earlier return APEX fare
of Rs 6900 on both sectors and the normal return fare
of Rs 14,420 and Rs 16,530, respectively. "The new
round trip fares are specifically targeted at the
Second Class AC passengers," Air Sahara President
Rono J Dutta told reporters here.
July 19, 2004
IA,
AI fleet expansion decision this year: Praful Patel
(Go To Top)
New
Delhi: A decision to allow Indian Airlines and
Air India to go ahead with their fleet expansion plans
would be taken this year, Civil Aviation Minister
Praful Patel has said. "A transparent decision will
be taken in 2004. The order will also be passed. Nothing
was done in the past so many years. Won't you give
me even six months? There is a whole process involved
and it has to be transparent too," Patel told Prabhu
Chawla in his 'Seedhi Baat' programme on 'Aaj Tak'
channel. He said Rs 25,000 crore to Rs 30,000 crore
would be needed if both the public sector carriers
went ahead with their fleet expansion programmes.
"That is why I said the process should be transparent.
I think Rs 50,000 crore will be invested in the civil
aviation sector in the next three years," Patel said
when asked about the funding of the fleet expansion
as well as government plans to modernise the airports.
Observing that "even Pakistani airports are better
than ours", he said the government had "not completely
changed" the erstwhile government's policy in regard
to building of modern airports in the country.
July 4, 2004
Employees
protest privatisation of airports (Go
To Top)
New
Delhi: The Airports Authority of India (AAI) employees
on Friday opposed a government move to privatise the
most profitable airports at New Delhi and Mumbai.
The slogan-shouting employees said they were feeling
betrayed and threatened to step up their agitation
if the proposed move was not shelved. "We have to
make the government understand that they are working
against their own policies which they had promised.
If they move ahead with the privatisation, we will
carry on with our agitation," M.K Ghoshal, general
secretary of the airport employee's union at New Delhi,
said. In Chennai and Bhubaneswar cities as well employees
went on a solidarity strike saying a there was no
logic in privatising a profit-making unit. "We are
opposing privatisation of airports at Mumbai and Delhi.
We are a PSU (Public Sector Undertaking) and that
too a profit- making PSU and this government had said
it would not privatise the profit making PSUs," Mahendran,
branch unit of the employee's union, said.
Civil
Aviation minister Praful Patel, who got a go ahead
from the coalition's leftist partners last month,
had said India needed to improve the state of its
shabby airports to present a better face to the rest
of the world. He, however, assured that privatisation
of the two profitable airports, started by the previous
government, would move ahead only after the issues
of security and labour were addressed. Preliminary
bids to sell shares in the two airports were open
till June 4, but officials in the ministry said they
expected some delay in the process. The government
had earlier hoped to complete the process by September,
but this could be delayed by about a month. The new
government is planning to allow foreign investors
to pick up to 49 percent stake in the proposed joint
ventures. Of the remaining 51 percent, AAI will hold
26 percent while the rest can be held by either companies
or financial institutions. Last September, the BJP-led
coalition approved a plan to spin off the New Delhi
and Mumbai airports into companies and sell 74 percent
stakes in them to private firms.
July 2, 2004
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