Aviation

Air India to operate World’s longest non-stop flight ..!

NEW DELHI: Air India could soon be operating the world’s longest nonstop commercial flight. The airline is planning to link the IT hotspots of India and US — Bengaluru and San Francisco (SFO) — which are almost 14,000 km apart.

At present the longest nonstop commercial flight is operated by Australian airliner Qantas between Dallas Fort Worth in the US and Sydney which is a 13,730 km journey.

Next year, UAE’s mega carrier Emirates will link Dubai with Panama City, a distance of 13,760 km. Avoiding the war zones of Iraq and Syria will lead to diversions that will increase the length of the journey.

“We are planning to have a nonstop from either Delhi or Bengaluru to San Francisco on our Boeing 777-200 long range aircraft. And in addition we are planning a direct service between Ahmedabad and London due to the huge demand for travel between these two cities,” said a senior AI official.

If it opts for Bengaluru-San Francisco connection, the flying time will be almost 17 to 18 hours for the longest nonstop commercial in the world. These ambitious flights will be among the first key decisions to be taken by AI’s new chairman Ashwani Lohani.

Air India to take legal action and impose fine on unruly passengers, to charge Rs 5 lakh for 1 hour delay(Opens in a new browser tab)

The announcement for the nonstop India-SFO flight could be made when Prime Minister Narendra Modi travels to Silicon Valley later this week. SFO has no direct flight to India despite a significant Indian population in Silicon Valley and the travel requirement of techies between the two cyber hubs.

Linking these two cities was the dream of now-grounded Kingfisher’s promoter Vijay Mallya who had planned to acquire an Airbus A-340 for this service. But his Bengaluru-based airline ran out of cash up and got buried in debt before it could reach US. Naresh Goyal’s Jet Airways had a one-stop flight from Mumbai to San Francisco that flew through China but this flight was stopped about five years back.

“All those plans were made when oil was prohibitively expensive. Now oil is a multi-year low and AI has the equipment to operate ultra-long haul flights using its mostly unused B-777 200 LRs. AI had acquired eight of these aircraft and five of them were sold to Abu Dhabi’s Etihad on which it is operating nonstop to Los Angeles. Now AI will also do the same,” said a source.

source : Times of India

Aviation

No More Jet Airways. Supreme Court Says “No Choice”, Orders Liquidation

Jet Airways was once one of India’s leading airlines, known for its service and extensive network. Founded in 1993, it served millions of passengers, connecting cities across India and international destinations.

However, since grounding its flights in April 2019, Jet Airways has struggled to navigate financial turbulence, leading to years of efforts to revive the airline and return it to the skies.

On Thursday, the Supreme Court ordered the liquidation of Jet Airways, citing “no choice” but to take this decisive step after the resolution plan failed to meet creditor obligations. The court invoked its extraordinary powers under Article 142, which allows it to make orders for “complete justice” in any case, overriding previous tribunal rulings.

China Set to Debut New J-35A Stealth Fighter at Zhuhai Airshow

The Jalan-Kalrock Consortium (JKC), which had won the bid to revive Jet, faced criticism for not fulfilling payment commitments to creditors, which included major banks like the State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank.

The Supreme Court’s ruling pointed to “peculiar and alarming” issues surrounding the resolution plan’s implementation, leading to its conclusion that liquidation was the only feasible outcome.

HondaJet’s New Auto-Throttle: A Game-Changer for Luxury Aviation

Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, alongside Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra, emphasized that while liquidation should be a last resort, it was necessary as the resolution plan was “no longer capable of implementation.”

In line with this decision, the court ordered that the ₹200 crore already infused by JKC be forfeited and directed the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) in Mumbai to appoint a liquidator to oversee the process.

JKC, a partnership between Murari Jalan, a UAE-based Indian entrepreneur, and Florian Fritsch, a Jet shareholder through Kalrock Capital Partners Limited, had taken ownership of Jet Airways two years after it was grounded. The consortium’s inability to fulfill its financial obligations has now led to this final verdict, marking the end of an era for Jet Airways in India.