2008 was the year reality struck home in the Indian airline industry. One whiff of the downturn exposed the lack of robust business planning, and abundance of financial vulnerability of Indian carriers, leaving all of them battered and bruised, some more than others.

We saw mass-scale defaulting on payments by carriers in India to everyone from airports to aircraft manufacturers.

Touted as THE growth sector of the future by both Boeing and Airbus in 2007, in the last nine months, domestic airlines have slashed capacity and with very shallow pockets, pulled back at least one-third of their aircraft orders due for delivery this year.

India’s domestic airline capacity shrank by more than 8%, compared with 3.5% in Japan and growth of 18% in China.

As late as mid 2008 Boeing, Airbus SAS and Empresa Brasileira de Aeronautica SA (Embraer) were projecting delivery of 91 aircraft during 2009. They will now thank the stars if they can deliver the reduced quantity of 57 aircraft expected this year.

Both Boeing and Airbus are claiming that no airline has "cancelled orders", but this statement does not account for the deferrals in delivery and the diversion sales of aircraft by Indian carriers to foreign airlines.

In this highly competitive market, it appears that Boeing has the upper hand. It is facing deferral of only two of its 22 expected deliveries down 10%, while Airbus is down 53% expecting to deliver only 32 out of the expected 68 aircraft in large part due to Kingfisher. Embraer increased its delivery tally to five aircraft up 500% from the projected one thanks to the phenomenal growth of Paramount Airways their main customer

Boeing Customers

Jet Airways with fleet of 111 aircraft accounts for the two deferrals of Boeing. One 777-300ER and one 737. Jet has leased out a significant portion of its wide-body fleet. A total of seven of its eleven uber-luxurious Boeing 777-300ERs to Turkish Airlines THY and Gulf Air, and two each of its Airbus A330-200s to Oman Air and Gulf Air. Jet has called for a further ten per cent cut in seat capacity and is now trying to leasing out its narrow body Boeing 737s.

Image courtesy and copyright A.J. Best. Used with his permission. Please do not re-use without permission.

SpiceJet with 12.5 per cent growth will take delivery of 12 Boeing 737-800s/900s, one each quarter for the next three years adding to its fleet of 14 Boeing 737-800s and 900s.

Air India backed by the Government of India, will take delivery of its new Boeing 737-800s, four 777-300ERs and and three 777-200LRs by September, as scheduled. Air India (domestic and international combined) has a fleet of 150 aircraft. The combined order to Boeing and Airbus was for 111 aircraft.

Airbus Customers

The largest domestic carrier and most aggressive Airbus customer Kingfisher Airlines is in terrible financial shape. It led all Asian carriers with a 17.1 per cent capacity cut and has held its expansion to its existing 76 aircraft not withstanding the fracas with GECAS on four of its aircraft. It has diverted its three of its five A340-500s to Arik Air of Nigeria, the balance two have become "white tails" at Toulouse. Of the five A330-200s delivered, two are lying idle. Kingfisher is now in talks with Arik Air in an effort to lease them. The deliveries of the A380 have been deferred yet again. Even pending deliveries of ATR42s and 72s from the Air Deccan days are languishing at Toulouse. Kingfisher has been forced to defer delivery of 32 of 48 Airbus A320 planes that were due for delivery in late 2008 and in 2009 and is also diverting its narrow body A320 family orders to foreign airlines like Turkish THY. So while Airbus may deliver planes to an Indian airline, the aircraft may never come to India.

IndiGo along with fellow value carrier SpiceJet has been registered increasing market share, and has recently taken delivery of its 19th Airbus A320. It is maintaining a more conservative but steady delivery rate.

Air India domestic (formerly Indian Airlines) will maintain its delivery with Airbus for the narrow body A320 family having recently taken delivery of three each A321-200s and A319-100s. Airbus has also commenced discussions with Air India on the A380 superjumbo and hopes to convince the airline to buy a few.

While both Boeing and Airbus do not expect any new orders from the Indian market in the near to medium term, they continue to be bullish on India and maintain their market forecasts which estimates that the country’s airlines would buy up to 1,100 planes over the next 20 years.

Firstly, many thanks to all the Bangalore Aviation readers who participated in last week's trivia question - Which is the longest scheduled commercial airline flight ?

For the purpose of definition I placed four criteria for an ultra long-haul non-stop flight:

1. Operated by a commercial airliner with a definite schedule
2. No intermediate stop-over point within its scheduled duration
3. More than 12,000 km in route length
4. Over 15 hours of scheduled flying time

The correct answer is Singapore Airline's flight SQ21 from Newark to Singapore, 16,600km (10,314 miles, 8,963 nm), 18 hours 40 minutes scheduled flying time. Congratulations to Dominik from Poland for the right answer.

Incidentally Singapore Airline's SQ22 from Singapore to Newark follows a "great circle" route of 15,700 km, while SQ21 follows a "polar" route which is 16,600 km.

The second longest route is also by Singapore Airlines. SQ37 (formerly SQ19) from Los Angeles to Singapore takes 18 hours 10 minutes to complete the 14,033 km (8,771 mile, 7,577 nm) trip.

Both these flights are operated by the Airbus A340-500.

Delta operates India's longest flight, the world's fourth longest from Mumbai to Atlanta using the Boeing 777LR. DL185 takes 17 hours to cover the 13,739 km (8,537 mile, 7,395nm) journey. This is also the longest currently scheduled flight by the Boeing 777LR. For a full list click here.

On 10 December 2005, a Boeing 777-200LR completed the world's longest non-stop passenger flight, travelling eastwards from Hong Kong to London a 21,602 km (13,422 miles) in roughly 22 hours and 40 minutes. This was not a scheduled flight and although the airplane seats 301, there were only 27 passengers aboard this flight, I guess the balance weight being made up by fuel.

This is not, however, the record for longest time staying aloft for an airliner. This record is held by the 1939 Berlin-New York non stop flight of a reciprocal piston powered Focke-Wulf Fw 200 built for Lufthansa (flight time 24 hours and 56 minutes). Now that would be a very painful flight.

Image courtesy Singapore Airlines

Two deliveries of "first" of aircraft model occurred on March 27th.

Airbus delivered the first A330-300 to Finnair, out of an order for eight. Powered by General Electric CF6-80E1 engines, the new aircraft is in a two class configuration 42 Business, 229 Economy for a total seating for 271 passengers.

On the same day, Boeing delivered the first 777 Freighter to Emirates SkyCargo via Dubai Aerospace Enterprise (DAE). Coincidentally, Dubai Aerospace Enterprise Capital, the leasing arm of DAE, also has a total of eight 777 Freighters on order.

Images courtesy and copyright of Airbus and Boeing

Originally posted - 16:00GMT 21:30 local March 18

Something is in the air at the Bengaluru International Airport. For the second time in less than a week, an Airbus A330 is getting grounded at the airport with a technical fault.

Following the five day grounding of a Dragonair A330, it is the turn of Air France. F-GZCB which was to perform flight AF191 early this morning, has been grounded with a technical flaw in the avionics bay.

An Air France engineer is flying out with the required spares on tonight's AF192 flight, and is expected to fix the aircraft which should fly out some time tomorrow afternoon.

All the passengers on the stranded flight were put on alternate airlines or accommodated in hotels.

Update 1 - 13:00GMT 18:30 local March 19

After many efforts by the engineers at Bangalore very futile, a team of senior engineers flew in from Dubai late this afternoon on the Emirates flight and have commenced inspection of the aircraft. Parts are expected in from Paris on AF192 which should come in around 01:00 local. Hopefully F-GZCB will be repaired by tomorrow morning and leave back to her home in Paris.

Update 2 - 06:00GMT 11:30 local March 22

Poor F-GZCB is still sitting on the ground. Very forlorn. The major electrical problem has been addressed. The parking bill from the Airport is going to be big.

Update 3 - 18:00GMT 23:30 local March 22

F-GZCB finally flew out as a ferry flight at 19:00 local time (14:00 GMT). Even the departure was not without drama as the aircraft was originally scheduled to leave at 15:45 local to avoid the night curfew plaguing most European airports including Charles De Gaulle. At the last moment a hydraulics problem cropped up. Luckily there were three engineers from Air France at the site, and the issue was addressed and corrected in a record two hours.

Still special permission was needed for the European curfew, and having obtained it, the A330 finally left Bangalore almost five days after being on the ground.

Since F-GZCB was in "AOG" status (Aircraft On Ground) for such a long period, she will undergo a thorough check today before being pressed back in to service.

An Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, Emirates Airlines Airbus A340-500, registration A6-ERG performing flight EK407 from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, with 225 people on board, damaged and decommissioned the main runway at Melbourne airport while taking-off.

The aircraft ran off the runway 16 (length 3657 meters / 12,000 feet) around 22:30 local (12:30GMT) March 20, during its take-off run, struck its tail on the runway, and hit the runway end lights and the localizer antenna past the end of the runway 16.

The airplane climbed out safely, and tried to dump fuel over the ocean at Port Philip Bay but was forced to return to Melbourne for an immediate emergency landing when smoke started to fill the cabin.

The airplane was fully fuelled for the long non-stop flight to Dubai, and the heavily loaded aircraft landed hard on Melbourne's runway 34. She was able to taxi to the apron after being inspected by airport's emergency services.

Severe abrasions occurred to the tail skin and several access panels have been ripped off during the tail strike at take-off. The hard landing, un-avoidable due to the full fuel weight, has reportedly caused damage to the landing gear.

Melbourne airport authorities have confirmed that ILS runway 16 will need repairs and will not be available until Monday, March 23rd.

For full technical details of the accident including NOTAMs and METARs please visit Aviation Herald. Hat tip to Simon Hradecky who runs a great site keeping track of all the aviation incidents around the world.

Emirates recently announced that it will commence services to Toronto and Bangkok with its Airbus A380 superjumbo from June 1st.

In order to do this Emirates will have to reposition two of its A380s from the current double-daily New York route.

Emirates representatives have confirmed this re-positioning. One aircraft will be deployed on the three times a week Dubai Toronto service, and one will be used for one of the double daily Dubai Bangkok service.

One of the double-daily flights currently operated by the A380 will be replaced by a Boeing B777-300ER on the Dubai-New York JFK route.

While this re-positioning is occurring, all is not well between Airbus and Emirates. German paper Der Spiegel reports that the airline has slammed Airbus for "defects" on the plane, which has grounded the behemoth aircraft nine times costing the airline over 500 flying hours.

Emirates has presented Airbus with a damning list of defects in the new A380 super-jumbo jet. The airline, which has ordered 58 of the aircraft, warns of a possible "loss of confidence" in the giant plane.

While both the airline and manufacturer are putting on a front on congeniality in public, in private storms are brewing over perceived shoddy work ethic at Airbus and its suppliers, by Emirates.

In a presentation in February, Emirates showed Airbus a 46 page presentation with included photographs of defects including singed power cables, partially torn-off sections of panelling and defective parts of thrust nozzles in the engines.

The other two operators of the Airbus A380 are Singapore Airlines and Qantas. They seem to be taking a softer line with Airbus, but Emirates has a lot more at stake with a 58 plane order which represents over 25 per cent of the total order book Airbus has on the aircraft.

Read the full article here.

Armenia flag carrier Armavia took delivery of its first new A319 yesterday. The aircraft was handed over to Armavia’s President, Mikhail Bagdasarov, at a ceremony held at the Airbus factory in Hamburg, Germany. Operated under a lease agreement with ILFC, the new A319 will increase the airline’s Airbus fleet to five aircraft from the current four, two A319s and two A320s.

Armavia’s A319 features the all-new cabin that recently entered service on all members of the Airbus A320 family of aircraft. The new cabin increases passenger comfort in a brighter and more modern cabin environment. The aircraft is powered by CFM International's CFM56 engines, and is fitted with 134 passengers in a two-class cabin layout.

The airline plans to operate this aircraft on its international routes, such as to Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Saint Petersburg, Zurich, Berlin, Athens, Kiev, Odessa, Simferopol and Dubai.

I had gone to Bengaluru International Airport for a meeting, and took my camera along. Got some great shots of Kingfisher Airlines and Jet Airways at the field. Hope you enjoy. Visit my photo album on Flickr.

VT-VJK (the first KFA A330), performing flight IT2 coming in from London Heathrow. Sorry about the heat haze. The flight comes in the afternoon.


VT-VJN performing flight IT001 takes off for its ten hour trip to London.


Observe the lack of winglets on this Jet Airways Boeing 737-800 Next Generation


A nice northerly wind ensured all the planes showed me their belly while taking-off


One of Kingfisher's newer ATR72-500s (model AT72-212A)



I wonder who came or departed on this Cessna 525B Citation Jet 3?
Please do leave a comment, and spread the word.

During my visit to the Bengaluru International Airport on March 14th, I observed a Dragonair Airbus A330 B-HWH parked on the apron at 08:00

Obviously something was wrong. Normally the Dragonair flight is scheduled to arrive at 01:40 and leave by 02:40.

Found out today that the Dragonair aircraft had an engine problem on the outbound flight back to Hong Kong early morning on Tuesday, March 10th. Passengers were dis-embarked and put on flights of other airlines. A Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 freighter flew a new engine and a team of engineers to Bangalore on the 13th, and the Dragonair A330 was finally fixed and flew out on the 14th afternoon, about 8 hours after the picture was taken, five days after she was grounded.

Some updates on the production progress of the Airbus A380 superjumbo, courtesy of the A380 production forum.

MSN027 (F-WWSY) the fifth for Qantas (VH-OQE Lawrence Hargrave) came out of the Final Assembly Line (FAL) hangers and made its taxi tests.


MSN029 (F-WWSA) the sixth for Qantas (VH-OQF Charles Kingsford Smith) has been outside since it came out of the FAL in mid February. While inside the FAL, MSN027 and MSN029 had their tails switched. MSN027's tail going on MSN029 and vice versa. During a hail storm last year there was damage to MSN027's tail. To keep the production schedule, the tails were switched and repairs carried out. You will observe the tail on MSN029 (originally MSN027 tail) has been marked in black in some areas.


MSN023 (F-WWST) sixth for Emirates A6-EDF has left the FAL and is now on the flight line. It will make its first engine and taxi runs in early to mid April and also expected to fly in April as well.


MSN017 for Emirates (A6-EDE) will be delivered on 24th April.

Photos 1, 3, 5 courtesy Flickr user A380spotter. Photo 2 courtesy Flickr user Christope Ramos. Photo 4 courtest PictAero user David Barrie. All copyrights rest with them.

Visit the Bangalore Aviation Flickr photo gallery.

Lufthansa has launched a new website devoted to its upcoming Airbus A380 which has a planned entry into service during the 2010 summer schedule. The airline invites visitors to discover more about its future flagship including details about the current status of Lufthansa’s first Airbus A380.

The site is meant for both passengers and A380 fans who can find out, for example, about the route proving programme, which was conducted exclusively with Lufthansa, as well as about component acceptance tests or the transport of sections across Europe to the final assembly facility in Toulouse.



Over the next few months, Lufthansa will add more documentary material including extensive multimedia, to the website, with the aim of highlighting what makes the Lufthansa A380 so special.

A particular page I liked was where the A380 is super-imposed on to some known landmarks like a soccer pitch and St. Marks square, for size comparison.

Visit the website at www.lufthansa.com/a380.

A380 MSN017
The 5th A380 for Emirates Airlines, A6-EDE, is on the flight line at Hamburg and expected to be delivered in April. Thanks to the folks at the Hamburg Airport forum, enjoy the picture. Given the slowdown at Singapore Airlines, there is some debate on whether the next A380 out will be MSN026 (Qantas' 4th A380 VH-QQD) or MSN019 (Singapore Airlines' 7th A380 9V-SKG). I suggest following the knowledgeable folks at the A380 production forum.


Airbus delivers 500th A321 MSN3814
Last Friday, Airbus achieved a milestone and delivered the 500th A321 to Air France, who coincidentally received the first A321 delivered in 1994. As of date, Airbus has sold more than 750 A321s to about 65 customers all around the world.

Philippe Durand of Air France (left) and Uwe Schunke, Director Contractual Acceptance at Airbus

Korean Air order for six Airbus A330-200 WV058
Last September, Airbus fired a shot across the bows of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, when it announced a new longer range A330-200. Weight Variant (WV058) A330-200 has a 238 tonne MTOW (Maximum Take Off Weight) providing it a range of 7,200 nm, and thus allowing Airbus a product to take on the first batch of Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners, till the A350XWB came on line.

Korean Air (KAL) has placed a new firm order with Airbus for six more A330-200 aircraft for the WV058 variant. The 7,200 nm range allows the airline to connect its home base at Incheon to almost all continents in the world non-stop with the exception of South America. KAL will use these new aircraft for medium density non-stop routes to North America and Europe.

The aircraft will be in a three-class cabin layout, and is scheduled for delivery from 2010. The new order increases the total number of A330s ordered by Korean Air to 25, comprising 16 A330-300s and nine A330-200s.

One can speculate plenty, but this appears a preventive measure, and part of an on-going trend, due to the delivery delays on the 787, rather than a cancellation of KAL's 10 787-8 order. With significant vendor involvement in the 787, Korea will not risk economic repercussions a cancellation might bring.

It is possible that the ordered 10 787-8's will get converted to 787-9's, which are expected to commence delivery in 2013, and these will replace the existing KAL A330 fleet, but this is idle speculation for now.

Qantas' bad luck with its planes continue. On March 2, Qantas was forced to declare one of its flagship Airbus A380 superjumbos "unserviceable" at London Heathrow.

Despite best efforts and making hundreds of passengers wait over 12 hours, Qantas engineers could not repair a leak in the fuel system.

Qantas was forced to transfer its passengers on to a Boeing 747, after making them wait overnight for QF10 from London Heathrow to Melbourne to depart. The 747 flight finally departed 13 hours late.

This is the second embarrassing incident for Qantas in recent times. Earlier on January 19th, another of Qantas' A380's was grounded at Los Angeles LAX airport.

Admittedly the Qantas A380's are brand spanking new, and may have some occasional issues, but neither of the other two airlines operating the A380, Emirates and Singapore Airlines, are reporting this level of failure.

Hopefully the engineers at Airbus and Qantas can resolve the issues soon.

Wired has a nice story on the constant efforts by both Airbus and Boeing to increase fuel savings by their aircraft.

The latest technology which appears promising is "moving winglets" or "morphlets" whose configuration can be changed in-flight to suit flying conditions to deliver fuel savings. The two airframe makers are taking different approaches to the same goal.

Read the full story here.

At the start of this month, Irish low-cost carrier Ryanair announced it has invited proposals from both its sole vendor till date, Boeing, and competitor Airbus for 200 to 300 new single-aisle aircraft in the Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 category, for delivery between 2012 and 2017.

I had a chance to interact with senior Airbus executives during the recently concluded Aero India show in Bangalore, about the RFP from Ryanair. I was told that Airbus had an "unpleasant history" with the carrier, and that they were least interested in pursuing any deal.

The angst of Airbus can be felt in the words of Airbus chief commercial officer John Leahy, “We don’t plan a sales campaign with Ryanair, which would be very expensive and very time consuming,”.

This despite production cutbacks recently announced at the European plane maker.

Ryanair has a known history of ordering extensive capacity at discount prices and then re-negotiating outstanding orders for even lower prices than originally agreed upon.

Going by statistic compiled by Aviation International News, since 1998, if we count the order announcements between Boeing and Ryanair it adds up to almost 540, whereas in reality, Ryanair has placed firm orders for 338 airplanes.

Its now over to Boeing.

Airbus A380-861 MSN045 currently registered as F-WWSG, and destined as the 10th A380 for launch customer Singapore Airlines made its first flight on February 23 and flew straight to Hamburg, where it will undergo outfitting for the Singapore Airlines' luxurious interiors, and is expected to be delivered late this year and registered 9V-SKJ.

The plane had a rejected take-off the day earlier and underwent engine checks.

A preliminary report into a crash of an Air New Zealand Airbus A320 jet last November off the coast of France, is pointing the cause toward its aircrew who were performing low speed tests, claiming “the flight crew’s failure to adhere to standard operating procedures”.

As a result of the interim finding air safety regulators have issued urgent advice on tightening up procedures on non-commercial or “non-revenue” flights.

France’s Bureau d’Enquetes et d’Analyses (BEA) released an interim report which shows why the plane crashed but not what caused it.

Read the full report here.

Bahrain based Gulf Air has confirmed an agreement to lease four new Boeing 777-300ERs (B77W in industry parlance) from Jet Airways of India. The agreement which was signed on February 22nd, calls for three aircraft to join its fleet in March, and the fourth in May.

This deal was expected since January. Gulf Air is already wet-leasing two Airbus A330-200s from Jet on a temporary basis. Gulf Air was looking to replace its A340-300s with larger capacity B77Ws. Jet Airways has been actively leasing out most of its 11 award winning, uber-luxurious Boeing 777-300ERs in a desperate bid to stem the losses bleeding the airline.

Jet Airways has already leased out four B77Ws to Turkish THY Airlines, and with these four to Gulf Air, it will be left with just three aircraft in its fleet. Since Jet Airways sources confirmed to me they will operate four aircraft, two on the Mumbai London Heathrow route and one on the Delhi London Heathrow route, and one aircraft to be kept in the rotation, I can surmise that one more aircraft is expected to join the Jet fleet.

Jet Airways recently firmed up a deal to lease two A330-200s to Oman Air.

With an award winning cabin product like First Class suites, and herring-bone lie flat business class, these B77Ws will give Gulf Air an immediate product which can compete head-on with neighbours Emirates and Etihad in the luxury category. Gulf Air has indicated these aircraft will be used for services to several destinations such as London Heathrow, Bangkok and Kuala Lumpur as well as within the Middle East.

Jet officials claim the four 777-300ERs will be leased to Gulf Air for 42 months. The reports say the aircraft will be on wet-lease for the first six months, after which they will revert to dry leases. I only hope that Gulf Air looks after the aircraft well, a reputation which Turkish THY Airlines sadly lacks.

This photograph by Digital Airliners taken just two days ago at Toulouse shows two Airbus A340-500's.

One is still painted in Kingfisher Airlines' colours. Kingfisher had ordered five A340-500s, but defaulted on taking delivery last year. Three were diverted to Nigeria's Arik Air, but it appears the balance two have become the dreaded white tail for Airbus, i.e. a jet built but now the ordering airline is not taking delivery, and therefore the plane has no place to go.

Just two weeks ago, Kingfisher diverted 4 A321s to Turkish Airlines after its financial problems forced it to again default on delivery from Airbus.

The United States Federal Aviation Administration today issued a final airworthiness directive (AD) instructing operators of most Airbus A330 and A340 models to power down suspect air data inertial reference units (ADIRU) using one specific rotary dial on the panel.

The mandate follows EASA Emergency AD 2008-0225-E of December 18, 2008, which superseded EASA Emergency AD 2008-0203-E of November 19, 2008, issued after a Qantas Airways A330-300 pitched down unexpectedly while in cruise at flight level 370, seriously injuring 14 of the 303 passengers.

The Airbus A340 is also affected due to its cockpit similarity to the A330.

Read the directive here.