A day after announcing its ticket prices at par with AC II of Rajdhani trains, National carrier Air India today came out with another lucrative offer for its passengers allowing enhanced free check-in baggage on its jumbo 747 flights operating on the trunk Delhi-Mumbai route.

Besides, the carrier also announced heavily discounted fares, starting at Rs 15,000 for travel in first class of its Queen of the Skies (Boeing 747) flights to the two cities till January 15, a release said.

Air India is offering tickets at the price of Rajdhani! Yes, the state-run airline has come up with yet another offer that compares fares with that of Rajdhani AC-2nd class travel. This time the advantage is that you can book your tickets 20 days in advance, as opposed to the 4-hour window announced by Air India last time. The ‘Republic Day’ special offer of Air India starts from January 6 and will go on for a three-month period. You can now travel from various cities (see list below) at fares ranging from Rs 1080 to Rs 4730.

The civil aviation ministry is satisfied with the performance of Air India with respect to its 2012 turnaround plan for which the government pumped in R30,000 crore into the loss-making airline, and expects it to post an operating profit this financial year also, secretary RN Choubey told FE.

He said since the carrier’s plan is on track, the ministry expects it to post a net profit in FY19 ahead of the target of 2020-21 stipulated in the turnaround plan. Choubey’s assertion that the state-owned carrier will post an operating profit in FY17 is significant since the airline posted an operating loss during the first two quarters of the current fiscal.

State-owned airline Air India will get only Rs 80 crore as additional budget support in the current financial year from the government – way below its demand of Rs 2,200 crore.

This is despite the fact Air India’s chairman and managing director Ashwani Lohani had written to the government that lack of funds might derail the turnaround process of the airline. “The finance ministry accepted the civil aviation ministry’s argument that additional fund was necessary for the airline but expressed its inability to accept the full demand,” said a senior civil aviation ministry official.

New Delhi: Flag carrier Air India Ltd will deploy its double-decker four-engine jumbo jet Boeing 747 on domestic flights between Delhi-Mumbai to beat airport congestion.

The airline mostly flies its twin-engine narrow body Airbus A320 plane on this route currently, typically offering 140 seats inclusive of 20 business class seats.

A total of 21,678 passengers availed the last minute ticket sale scheme, which was launched by the national carrier Air India in early July this year under which it offered fares equivalent to AC second class of Rajdhani Express, Parliament was informed.

The Government-run airline had on July 9 launched the offer for a limited period, saying that the move was aimed at not only making last-minute bookings more affordable but also to fill up vacant seats.

Air India will get less than half of the equity support it wanted from the government this fiscal. Against the demand of Rs 3,900 crore, the state-owned airline will get only Rs 1,713 crore in FY17, official sources told FE. The capital infusion is part of the Rs 30,000-crore bailout package for Air India in the form of equity support by the government. So far, Rs 23,933 crore has been released to the company in several tranches.

Air India is all set to take delivery of its first more fuel-efficient A320 neo aircraft in January next year.

As it works on ways to turn around its fortunes, the airline is looking to ramp up the fleet with more fuel-efficient A320 neo (new engine option) planes.

The Narendra Modi-led central government has on several occasions chest-thumped about having changed the fortunes of Air India and Air India Express. Only recently it announced that Air India had made a profit after long. However, it turns out, some part of this profit would have been made by charging senior citizens booking tickets online as much as three times the normal adult airfare across sectors in India.

Thousands of people above the age of 60 years – pensioners, retired people, armed forces personnel and others – use Air India every month. The government-run airline seems to have charged these people at much higher rates than usual, even as they are entitled to concessionary airfare.

State-owned Air India, which reported an operating profit of Rs 105 crore during FY16, in what was seen as early signs of a turnaround, also managed to increase its revenue per regular employee by over 12% to Rs 1.09 crore in the year. This was achieved by reducing the number of regular employees to 19,401, down 8% compared with FY15.

Air India, which received a bailout package of Rs 30,000 crore by the government in 2012, had frozen hiring of regular employees in 2012 and has since hired pilots and cabin crew on contract. This improved the airline-to-employee ratio to 1:120 (excluding subsidiaries) compared with 1:139 in the earlier fiscal.

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