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12 December 2020 United Airlines inaugurated its new daily non-stop service between IGI Airport, New Delhi and its hometown hub at Chicago O’Hare International Airport today. These daily flights will be operated by a Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft. With the introduction of this new route, United will operate four daily nonstop flights from India. The airline additionally operates daily year-round services from Mumbai and New Delhi to New York/Newark and from New Delhi to San Francisco. United also expects to introduce a new daily non-stop service between Bengaluru and San Francisco commencing 8 May 2021. United will be the first U.S. carrier to provide non-stop service from Bengaluru to the U.S. and will offer more non-stop services from India than any other U.S airline. “We are excited to inaugurate our daily, non-stop service between New Delhi and our hometown Chicago O’Hare hub,” said Harvinder Singh, United Country Manager India. “This new flight strengthens our international route network and provides our customers from India with even greater travel choice, as well as the option of our Polaris business class service with flat-bed seats. With a network of connections from our Chicago O’Hare hub to 84 other destinations across the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, the new service opens up opportunities for both business and leisure travellers alike.” Commenting on the inaugural United Airlines flight from New Delhi, Videh Kumar Jaipuriar, CEO-DIAL said, “At Delhi Airport, we are delighted to welcome United Airlines’ non-stop flight service between New Delhi and Chicago. This route will provide individuals with another opportunity to fly non-stop between the two countries. It will not only help improve the business-related travel experience, but also encourage personal visits by a large Indian diaspora based in Chicago.” The aircraft features a total of 252 seats – 48 flat-bed seats in United Polaris business class, 88 seats in United Economy Plus and 116 seats in United Economy. United’s current services between India and the U.S. comply with India’s bilateral air travel arrangement for international air transportation.

Singapore/New Delhi Singapore Airlines (SIA) and Vistara have signed a Commercial Cooperation Framework Agreement further strengthening their partnership. This will enable them to offer seamless services to their customers by harmonising efforts in capacity planning, sales, marketing, joint fare products, customer services and operations. The agreement, which is subject to regulatory approval in Singapore, is an extension of a codeshare partnership that came into effect in 2017.This will allow both airlines to achieve further synergies on services between Singapore and India, as well as in the key regions of South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand. This will be important as the aviation industry recovers from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, and both international and domestic connectivity are restored in a gradual and calibrated manner in tandem with the demand for air travel. Ms JoAnn Tan, Acting Senior Vice President Marketing Planning, Singapore Airlines, said: “By bolstering our partnership, Singapore Airlines and Vistara are able to work together to provide additional options for our customers. It also reflects the importance of the Indian market to Singapore Airlines, as well as our commitment to grow our network in the coming years.” Mr. Leslie Thng, Chief Executive Officer, Vistara said: “We are thrilled to further strengthen our partnership with Singapore Airlines. The intent is reflective of our deep-rooted commitment to providing our customers the finest and the most convenient way to fly across the world with the consistency of a five-star travel experience. This is in line with our long-term growth plan of expanding Vistara’s global presence and presenting India’s best airline to the world.”

As we look forward to 2021, the promise of effective vaccinations against Covid-19 is offering hope to the beleaguered civil aviation industry, but confidence that it is safe to fly still needs to be built to drive up passenger numbers. Technology solutions such as touchless check-in will be important to building passenger confidence. But according to a Resilience First poll, the most valued technology solution for passengers would be a comprehensive pre-flight passenger testing programme. The social-media poll to survey what would inspire more confidence in air travel concluded that pre-flight passenger testing was the most valued confidence building measure for 50% of respondents, followed by a touchless airport experience for 25% of respondents. The results were released to coincide with an expert panel on airport innovation co-hosted by Resilience First and Intel and addressed by the Chair of the Civil Aviation Authority, Sir Stephen Hillier. Ellie Wood, Account Manager – Transportation, Intel Corporation (UK) Ltd, said: “What a tough, tough year it has been seeing the devastating effect that Covid-19 has had on the air industry. We need to look at viable solutions to an industry with depleted funds that has lost lots of its people and skills.” “We need technology that can bridge the gap and help control the effects of the pandemic whilst transforming airport operations, boost customer confidence and make them feel more efficient than before.” Sir Stephen Hillier, Chair, Civil Aviation Authority, said: “Covid-19 is the greatest challenge which has ever faced the global aerospace enterprise. While we need to deal with the immediate challenges that brings, we also need to build greater resilience to deal with future challenges. “The immediate challenge with this pandemic is rebuilding consumer confidence, and we can start to see some important pieces coming into place now: promising news on vaccines, the roll out of airport testing, along with the test and release programme, and reducing quarantine periods. But we also need to look beyond Covid-19. We need new definitions of what level of resilience we should aspire to, in order to protect the industry in the future.” “If you look back over the last 7 or 8 months it’s been incredibly tough, but if we also look at industry’s adaptation to the Covid-19 pandemic, we can have confidence in our ability to work together, to respond to challenges, and to recover.” Jaume Portell, CEO, Beabloo, said: “Technology has quickly moved from the use of intelligence to create better spaces to its use to protect human beings in airports. The role of technology here is to follow the customer in the airport journey with information, intelligence and automatic protection. We have seen that the interest of the audience for messages that talk about security is 300% higher than any other message that we might share with them.” “We use thermal cameras at entrances to sense if someone has the wrong level of temperature and we use the same camera to see if they are wearing a mask. Thermal sensing checks people’s temperature in real time as they enter a physical space. It triggers an audio or visual alert on digital signage when the sensor detects someone with a higher temperature than the predefined threshold.” Gabriel Feldman, Consultant, ICTS Europe, said: “The first layer of technology is mobile apps that allow vital sign monitoring, including heart and respiration rate, using the selfie camera that measures specific physiological states with algorithms, and flags individuals that show clear signs of being sick.” “The second layer of defence is a physical device positioned at the entrance to a building to get a much more accurate reading of vital signs. This device uses multiple sensors including a laser to identify vital signs such as pulse anomaly, shortness of breath, chills and agitation and chest palpitations.” “For those that show symptoms we would allow a quick Covid-19 test at the airport. The aim is to provide a manifest for the airline showing that everyone on the plane is Covid-19 free up until the moment of boarding.” Pedro Torres, Co-Founder & CEO, YooniK, said: “Covid has had a huge impact on everyone and the way we address it and prepare for the future can make a big difference. There are two key words in the way we tackle this in airports – contactless and crowdless. It’s not just about Covid, we need to prepare for the future while dealing with Covid and we should not hamper our long-term vision for how we can make better experiences for customers. We need to make those visions real whilst solving this problem.”

Tel Aviv, Israel Gulf Air announces the launch of its operations to Tel Aviv Beginning January 7, 2021Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain, and EL AL Airlines, Israel’s national airline, are set to embark on a historic collaboration following the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) during an official visit from the Kingdom of Bahrain to the State of Israel. The MOU was signed at the Hilton Tel Aviv by the Chairman of Gulf Air’s Board of Directors H.E. Mr. Zayed R. Alzayani and the Chairman of EL AL Airlines’ Board of Directors Mr. David Brodet. H.E. Mr. Alzayani also announced at the ceremony the launch of Gulf Air’s direct flights go Tel Aviv starting from, January 7, 2021 – subject to government approvals – with 2 weekly flights. The MOU signing and announcement of the airline’s newest destination launch follows the recent announcement of peace between the Kingdom of Bahrain and the State of Israel and the political, commercial and civil aviation agreements signed recently between the two countries.H.E. Mr. Alzayani commented: “We are delighted to announce the launch of our Bahrain – Tel Aviv route as part of the historic initiation of Bahraini – Israeli relations. As the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain; we take great pride in supporting our leadership and Kingdom in their role of preserving peace and prosperity in the region. We hope this is merely the beginning of developing further aviation opportunities and look forward to work with our friends and colleagues at EL AL and support each other to achieve bigger goals. We trust this new route will promote traffic providing commercial and social gains for both countries, while paving the path for numerous connections to the rest of our networks via the two destinations”.Mr. Brodet stated: “The opportunity to explore a potential cooperation with Gulf Air is a direct result of the changes taking place in the region. We at EL AL look forward to seeing how we can offer our passengers new and exciting options – it goes well beyond just the flights but with expanding in the areas of cargo, maintenance and travel technology with EL AL’s Cockpit innovation hub. I welcome H.E. Mr. Alzayani to Israel and look forward to visiting Bahrain in the future.” The comprehensive MOU sets the foundation to discuss potential joint codeshare operations between Manama and Tel Aviv, as well as on the global flight networks beyond the two carriers’ hubs, and contains plans for greater commercial cooperation in the fields of loyalty, cargo, engineering, travel technology and any area that can benefit both airlines and their customers. Last month the airline operated the first ever and historic flight between Bahrain and Israel that carried the Kingdom’s delegation headed by Bahrain’s Foreign Minister H.E. Abdul Latif Al Zayani which inaugurated the new flight code GF972 and the return flight of GF973, representing the international dialling codes of both countries.