Mumbai: Air India's plan to trim its 27,000 bloated workforce by offering a voluntary retirement scheme (VRS) is stuck in the North Block, with the Finance Ministry questioning the rationale behind the proposed scheme.
The VRS scheme is "stuck in the Finance Ministry over the payment of Rs 1,200 crore for it. The ministry has pointed out that around 7,000 employees will retire from service over the next three years and another 12,000 will be transferred to the ground handling and engineering subsidiaries," Air India sources said.
This means only about 8,000 employees will be left with the carrier over the next five years, as it has not been hiring for the last couple of years. The Finance Ministry does not see any rationale in coming out with such an offer at this stage, the sources said, adding that Air India requires the nod of this Ministry and the Department of Expenditure before it comes out with the offer.
The airline had last September approved the VRS package for all its permanent employees who have served for 15 years or were at least 40 years of age. The proposed scheme targeted a total of approximately 5,000 employees....
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01:50 PM, May 19, 2013
New Delhi: The recent 'unbundling' of some services such as seat preferences or meals on board might be helping airlines to earn a lot of ancillary revenue, but the government is considering whether it could limit the number of 'preferred seats' on sale on each flight. The government has been prompted to step in just days after it announced unbundling of these services following reports that some airlines were charging...
12:48 PM, May 19, 2013
According to reports, the Boeing team is working on a new and improved design of Dreamliners. Air India has pressed the first of its modified Dreamliners into service as it redeploys the planes. Air India had grounded all six Dreamliners on January 17 after All Nipon Airlines of Japan reported battery overheating and fire in two of its aircraft in early January. ...
08:59 AM, May 18, 2013
Mumbai: Boeing on Friday said it will ready the remaining four grounded Dreamliners of Air India within this month and also deliver the seventh 787 to the national carrier by end of the month. After grounding all the six Dreamliners on January 17, Air India on Wednesday put two Dreamliners back into operations on the Delhi-Bangalore and Delhi-Kolkata sectors. The remaining four are under repair at the hangar here. "As...
09:50 PM, May 17, 2013
New Delhi: State-run Air India is open to selling all eight of its Boeing 777 passenger aircrafts, Chairman Rohit Nandan said, and the debt-ridden carrier is seeking Boeing's help in talks with potential buyers. Air India will replace the routes flown by the aircrafts with high-tech 787 Dreamliner jets initially, he said. More details are awaited. ...
01:28 PM, May 15, 2013
Mumbai: An Air India New Delhi-Bangalore flight had to make an unscheduled landing at Bhopal after the flight commander was locked out of the cockpit, an airline spokesperson said on Tuesday. The bizarre incident occurred on Monday when the flight commander of AI-403 went to the toilet briefly and returned to find the cockpit door locked. Despite all efforts from outside and inside by the co-pilot and a trainee pilot,...
10:21 AM, May 15, 2013
New Delhi: State-run Air India Ltd will resume flying its Boeing Co 787 Dreamliner passenger jets from Wednesday, Civil Aviation Minister Ajit Singh said on Tuesday, almost four months after the planes were grounded due to safety concerns. Air India has six Dreamliners and has ordered 21 more. The planes have been grounded worldwide since January following incidents of overheating in the batteries providing auxiliary power. Boeing has since worked...
01:06 PM, May 14, 2013
New Delhi: A move that was aimed at bringing down flying costs has taken a turn for the worse. Starting May 13, you might have to pay more to fly. Air India ,for instance, has reduced free check-in baggage to 15 kilograms from the earlier 20 kilograms. Effective from May 13, each extra kilogram above the free allowance limit will cost Rs 250. Tickets with the lowest fare will be...
09:09 AM, May 12, 2013
New Delhi: Air India has launched test flights of its Dreamliner aircraft, which have been fitted with new battery packs following battery fire incidents in January, as the first of these sophisticated planes was flown from Mumbai to Delhi via Ahmedabad. By Friday, two of these Boeing 787 Dreamliner planes would be test-flown several times daily between Delhi and Amritsar so that the pilots and cabin crew get the experience...
07:30 PM, May 09, 2013
Mumbai: Jet Airways group on Thursday said it has revised, with effective from May 15, the free baggage allowance to 15 kg in the economy class on all domestic routes, but has retained the cabin baggage limit at the previous level of 7 kg. The airline, in a statement, said it will charge a passenger flat Rs 250 for every additional baggage. However, the JetPrivilege members will continue to enjoy...
06:57 PM, May 09, 2013
Mumbai: An Air India pilot and two air hostesses were suspended after an airline probe found that the cabin crew overstayed in the cockpit on a Delhi-bound flight from Bangkok on April 12. The action came amidst reports that while the pilot took a nap in the business class, the air hostesses were left to operate the aircraft over 20 minutes, endangering the safety of 166 passengers on board. The...
06:58 PM, May 03, 2013
New Delhi: Four people were arrested for using 57 fake credit cards to dupe a major bank of over Rs 40 lakh to support their lavish lifestyles, police said on Thursday. Mayank Jain, 28, Roshan Dass, 27, Kuldeep Srivastava, 23 and Ashok Ganwani,35 got the cards issued from Citibank on the basis of fake salary slips and identity cards of Air India. According to police, fathers of Jain and Das...
05:57 AM, May 03, 2013
New Delhi: US aircraft manufacturer Boeing has agreed to compensate Air India for the grounding of the Dreamliner aircraft due to battery-fire incidents, Rajya Sabha was informed on Thursday. Minister of State for Civil Aviation KC Venugopal replied in affirmative when he was asked whether Boeing had agreed to pay the compensation to Air India. He, however, said the quantum of compensation could not be disclosed in accordance with the...
05:31 PM, May 02, 2013
New Delhi: The Jet-Etihad deal deal might have brought hope to India's struggling aviation sector but it is rattled Air India. It is a double blow - it will have to fight the combined strength of Jet's market penetration in India and Etihad's global network. The government has also increased the traffic rights between the two countries to 36,670 seats per week from the existing 13,300. This will eat into...
07:44 AM, Apr 26, 2013
New Delhi: Warning that the proposed deal between Jet Airways and Gulf carrier Etihad to increase number of flights will lead to a "certain demise" of the national carrier Air India, former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi on Saturday demanded that a fresh look be taken on it. Seeking "re-examination" of the process, Trivedi in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh sought his intervention, asking him to keep the talks...
10:34 PM, Apr 20, 2013
New Delhi: Air India's Dreamliner Aircraft, grounded since January after incidents of battery fire, may take to the sky in the next two weeks, officials said on Saturday. US Federal officials have accepted Boeing's revamped battery system for its beleaguered 787 Dreamliners and intend to lift a three-month-old order grounding the planes, Boeing said in a statement in Washington. "A team of engineers from Boeing is being flown into India...
09:59 AM, Apr 20, 2013
Mumbai: National carrier Air India has shown interest in acquiring some of the self check-in kiosks of Kingfisher Airlines (KFA) at the city's domestic airport, weeks after private carrier Jet sought to take over some of the international and domestic routes of KFA, say airport sources. "Since Kingfisher Airlines is no longer operating, Air India has evinced interest in acquiring a few of its kiosks," sources at Mumbai airport said....
11:49 AM, Apr 07, 2013
New York: Boeing Co said it plans to make a test flight later on Friday with its 787 Dreamliner jet, aimed at returning the grounded plane to service after more than two months on the ground. Boeing said the flight is scheduled to depart around 11 am PDT (11:30 pm IST) and last about two hours. The time is subject to change, it said. The flight would gather data for...
11:34 PM, Apr 05, 2013
Domestic air travel is going to be costlier again with both state-run Air India and private carrier Jet Airways hiking fuel surcharge on flight tickets by up to Rs 150. "Both Jet Airways and Air India have revised their fuel urcharge on domestic network by up to Rs 150," an industry source said. ...
01:06 AM, Mar 29, 2013
Boeing CEO Jim McNerney is sure his company is "very close" to getting its troubled 787 Dreamliner jet back flying again. "We have a high degree of confidence in the technical solution we are testing right now with the FAA," McNerney said on Thursday. "I think it will be sooner than later." ...
07:50 PM, Mar 28, 2013
