Heena Sharma Blog

Low cost airline SpiceJet has told its pilots that most of them will not get paid for the months of April and May. The airline instead will roster its pilots in a way that most get chances to operate the company's cargo aircraft in order to get minimal pay. Pilots who are operating cargo aircraft are getting paid according to the hours they fly. SpiceJet has five freighter aircraft which are ferrying cargo like medical and food supplies within India and abroad. Additionally, it has also deployed passenger aircraft Boeing 737 and Q400 for carrying cargo. “We will not be getting any salary for April and May 2020. Over the coming weeks we intend to increase the number of aircraft carrying cargo. Our rostering team will ensure that all of us get to fly the aircraft. Flying will be limited but it will ensure that all our training requirements are current and skills stay intact,” Gurcharan Arora, the airline’s Chief of flight Operations said in a message to the pilots. Read More

India's largest airline IndiGo will fill its airport buses at 50 per cent capacity when service resumes. The airline will also discontinue on-board meal services, CEO Ronojoy Dutta told employees on Friday. These along with frequent deep cleaning of aircraft are part of the multiple changes that the airline will do its protocols in order to keep crew and passenger crew safe when the airline starts operating again. India had imposed a 21-day lockdown on 25 March — one of the most drastic measure any country has taken to control the outbreak of the coronavirus. The government is planning to restart in a phased manner which will mean that only a few routes will start in first stage after the lockdown is removed. Read More

Vistara took the delivery of its first wide-body Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner plane on Friday, making it the first Indian airline to fly this aircraft. The plane, which has the registration number VT-TSD, will depart from the Boeing facility here at 2 pm (local time) on Friday and land in Delhi at 2 pm (local time) on Saturday, Vistara officials said here. The new aircraft is the first of the six that Vistara has purchased from Boeing. The second Dreamliner aircraft is currently on the production line and will be delivered soon. Vistara's Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft comes with 299 seats in a three-class cabin configuration, giving customers a choice of business, premium economy and economy cabins. The aircraft features lie-flat business class seats in a 1-2-1 configuration that gives a direct aisle access to each business class passenger and a separate premium economy cabin that offers seats in a 2-3-2 configuration. Read More

No-frills carrier SpiceJet on Wednesday said it will launch 20 new flights on its domestic routes, including some services under the government's regional connectivity scheme, Udan, from late next month as part of the airline's summer schedule. The new flights, starting from March 29, include services to Patna from Amritsar, Varanasi and Guwahati. Besides, it will also launch flights on Hyderabad-Mangaluru, Bengaluru-Jabalpur and Mumbai-Aurangabad routes, all under the Regional Connectivity Scheme (RCS), for the first time on its network, the airline said in a release. The new services will fly daily and will be operated by a mix of Boeing 737-800 and Bombardier Q400 aircraft, it stated. These services will enhance connectivity between key metros and smaller cities, it said. With the commencement of these new flights, the airline will have a total of 52 flights connecting 12 cities under the RCS scheme, SpiceJet said. Read More