Civil Aviation

Dec 15th, 2020 The new generation medium-range passenger airliner MС-21-310 aircraft equipped with the new Russian PD-14 engines made its maiden flight from the airfield of Irkutsk Aviation Plant, a branch of Irkut Corporation. The aircraft was operated by the crew of test pilots VasilySevastyanov and Andrey Voropaev and test engineer Alexander Solovyev. The flight task included checks of power plant operation modes, aircraft stability and controllability, as well as the operation of its systems. The flight time was 1 hour and 25 minutes, altitude up to 3500 m and speed up to 450 km/hour. The pilot VasilySevastyanov said after landing: “The flight task was fully completed. The new engines worked steadily in all modes”. The General Director of PJSC UAC, YurySlyusar, noted: “MC-21-310 heads to the development tests and joining the certification program. The ability for customers to choose the type of aircraft engine expands the aircraft’s market potential and reduces the risks of the program.” The MC-21-300 program is at the stage of certification testing and is being developed by Irkut Corporation ((part of United Aircraft Corporation).

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.

Delhi, 27 November 2020 Vistara will operate special, non-stop flights between Mumbai and London Heathrow from 16 January 2021 onwards. The airline will operate these special flights thrice a week – on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, complementing its recently-launched service between Delhi and London Heathrow as part of the ‘transport bubble’ agreement between India and the UK. The flights will be operated on Vistara’s brand-new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner aircraft. Bookings for these flights are being progressively opened on all channels, including Vistara’s website, mobile app, and through travel agents. Mr. Leslie Thng, Chief Executive Officer, Vistara, said, “We are delighted at the very positive response to our service between Delhi and London Heathrow which has encouraged us to further strengthen the network by adding connectivity from Mumbai as we see considerable demand between the two countries, and remain optimistic about the future. Vistara is well-positioned with its brand new fleet, world-class cabin products, award-winning service, and more importantly, the trust of our customers.” Vistara will accept all eligible customers meeting visa/entry requirements in both the countries, as specified by the respective government bodies. Vistara strongly encourages its customers to fully understand these guidelines before making their bookings.

Montreal, Canada While delivering opening remarks to this year’s ‘Routes Reconnected’ virtual industry event focused on sectoral recovery, ICAO Secretary General Dr. Fang Liu underscored how the UN agency has been continuously stressing the pandemic’s threats to the basic sustainability of international flight, keeping related concerns “at the forefront of government and UN system consideration.” “We know that airlines are still facing dramatically reduced flights and load factors, and that a resurgence of COVID-19 is now taking place across much of the northern hemisphere,” she said. “We know airlines cannot service routes, and keep the world connected, by managing flights without the passengers who make them financially viable. And with our ICAO forecasts now estimating a 60% reduction in 2020 passenger totals, we know that these threats to your financial viability pose cascading risks for civil societies in many areas of socio-economic and sustainable development.” Dr. Liu emphasized that a world not connected by scheduled flights is “a world where countries will face serious challenges to their short- and long-term needs for fresh fruits and vegetables, vaccines and medical supplies, and many other perishable and high-value goods.” She also stressed aviation’s current role in the global growth of e-commerce, “which has been a beacon of economic growth during the pandemic period,” and that our collective global capacity to reconnect the world, and lift it into economic recovery post COVID-19 was also being placed at risk. Highlighting the recovery bright spots being realized through Public Health Corridors and intra-regional resilience, Dr. Liu drew attention to the importance of governments and industry working together through ICAO to optimize prudent synergies between air transport objectives and current public health measures. “This reminds us that international air routes require extensive negotiation and bilateral or multilateral agreement among countries, and it’s an important aspect of ICAO’s role to provide the forums where those activities take place,” she commented. In looking ahead, Dr. Liu reminded the industry audience that, despite COVIID-19’s catastrophic impacts, “we must continue to actively pursue our priorities and targets for aviation safety, security, efficiency and environmental sustainability.” “This includes the pressing airspace and aircraft capacity concerns which were afflicting many air transport markets pre-COVID, and the new safety risks posed by operators struggling with diminishing financial and human resources,” she noted, “and there is also the strong global expectation that we will build back better post-pandemic, both in terms of aviation’s emissions and its overall impacts and contributions to ecological sustainability.” The ICAO Secretary General welcomed the decision by the governing Council of ICAO to establish a new high-level forum with industry on sectoral innovation, stressing the many areas where it will be playing a part in the near-future, including within ICAO in terms of how it assesses and enables new developments in autonomous, unmanned, sub orbital, and supersonic flight, in addition to Artificial Intelligence and blockchain solutions. “These activities should remind us that we are ushering in an entirely new era in powered flight even as we confront this dire threat to our traditional operations,” she concluded. “They also remind us that people love to fly, and to be flown, and that long after the pandemic is behind us aircraft will continue to connect us, and our world.” (Published unedited based on the ICAO Press Release)

23 November 2020 Qatar Airways is playing an important part in the repatriation of seafarers stranded due to the pandemic, working closely with governments and the maritime industry to operate hundreds of chartered and scheduled flights to help bring home over 150,000 workers. Understanding the difficulties and challenges many of these vital workers have faced in returning home or completing crew changes, Qatar Airways has recently established a dedicated Mariner Lounge at Hamad International Airport. Seafarers and offshore worker passengers can relax and enjoy refreshments in the exclusive Mariner Lounge while they wait for their onward flight. In addition to an international selection of food and beverages, facilities include unlimited high-speed wi-fi, shower facilities, a television area, reading materials and a Business Centre. The combination of an extensive global network with more than 100 destinations, a selection of fuel-efficient aircraft to operate charters and the Best Airport in the Middle East has enabled the airline to quickly and seamlessly support the maritime industry to repatriate their workers and facilitate crew changes. The airline’s commitment to take people home has seen it operate charters for maritime workers to many destinations not previously served by Qatar Airways, including Abidjan, Ivory Coast; Bridgetown, Barbados; Lomé, Togo; Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; and Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.  In addition, Qatar Airways sustained operations throughout the pandemic to many important locations for seafarers, such as Amsterdam, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, Oslo, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Singapore.  With the support of the maritime industry, Qatar Airways was also able to establish scheduled services to Cebu and Clark in the Philippines. Qatar Airways Group Chief Executive, His Excellency Mr. Akbar Al Baker, said: “Qatar Airways recognises the vital role shipping plays and how seafarers are essential to keeping the global economy open and operating. As a gesture of our thanks and to show our support to the industry, we have established a dedicated Mariner Lounge at Hamad International Airport that is complimentary for all seafarers and offshore workers travelling with Qatar Airways. While waiting for their connecting flight they can relax in comfort and enjoy the wide variety of refreshments on offer. “Throughout the pandemic, we have worked closely with governments and the maritime industry to operate as many flights as possible to facilitate crew changes and to reunite seafarers with their families and loved ones. While other airlines stopped flying, Qatar Airways pledges to remain open for business to facilitate essential business travel. With plans to further expand our network to more than 125 destinations, we will continue to work closely with all stakeholders to continue to be the airline of choice to keep seafarers and the global economy moving.” Qatar Airways’ strategic investment in a variety of fuel-efficient, twin-engine aircraft, including the largest fleet of Airbus A350 aircraft, has enabled it to continue flying throughout this crisis and perfectly positions it to lead the sustainable recovery of international travel. The airline recently took delivery of three new state-of-the-art Airbus A350-1000 aircraft, increasing its total A350 fleet to 52 with an average age of just 2.6 years. Due to COVID-19’s impact on travel demand, the airline has grounded its fleet of Airbus A380s as it is not environmentally justifiable to operate such a large, four-engine aircraft in the current market. Qatar Airways has also recently launched a new programme that enables passengers to voluntarily offset the carbon emissions associated with their journey at the point of booking. Qatar Airways currently operates more than 700 weekly flights to over 100 destinations across the globe. By the end of the IATA Winter Season, Qatar Airways plans to rebuild its network to 126 destinations including 20 in Africa, 11 in the Americas, 42 in Asia-Pacific, 38 in Europe and 15 in the Middle East. Many cities will be served with a strong schedule with daily or more frequencies. A multiple award-winning airline, Qatar Airways was named ‘World’s Best Airline’ by the 2019 World Airline Awards, managed by Skytrax. It was also named ‘Best Airline in the Middle East’, ‘World’s Best Business Class’, and ‘Best Business Class Seat’, in recognition of its ground-breaking Business Class experience, Qsuite. The Qsuite seat layout is a 1-2-1 configuration, providing passengers with the most spacious, fully private, comfortable and socially distanced Business Class product in the sky. It is the only airline to have been awarded the coveted ‘Skytrax Airline of the Year’ title, which is recognised as the pinnacle of excellence in the airline industry, five times.

Manama, Kingdom of Bahrain :22 November 2020Gulf Air, the national carrier of the Kingdom of Bahrain, announces the appointment of Mrs. Shams Al Doseri as Country Manager for its Muscat station after relocating from Ethiopia back into the Middle East. Mrs. Al Doseri will represent Gulf Air in the Sultanate of Oman after gaining a wide experience in sales and outstation roles; a country that has been served by Gulf Air since 1957 and it is one of Gulf Air’s key routes in the GCC. Mrs. Al Doseri, the first Bahraini female to run a Gulf Air outstation, will take on the challenge of further strengthening Gulf Air’s growth in Oman by utilizing the experience gained whilst spending nearly 10 years in the airline’s Sales department in Bahrain in various roles and abroad. Gulf Air is committed to invest in its Bahraini workforce and their career development and as such, it continues to provide opportunities for Bahraini nationals to take over senior positions in the company. Gulf Air is proud that it remains a leader in the Bahrainisation programme in the Kingdom as it provides the opportunity for local talents and experienced personnel to work in its various areas of the airline’s business.