Recent News

Bengaluru, 13th Feb 2023: Defence Secretary Giridhar Aramane held bilateral meetings on 12 February 2023 with three defence delegations on the sidelines of Aero India 2023 at Bengaluru. Defence Secretary met Mr Engr Turki Saad, General Manager Industrial Relations, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and discussed a number of bilateral defence cooperation issues. A US delegation led by Mr Jedijiah P. Royal, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defence for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, and accompanied by Ambassador Elizabeth Jones, Charge D’Affairs US Embassy and Maj Gen Julian Cheator, US Air Force, met the Defence Secretary. A wide range of ongoing and future defence cooperation issues were discussed. US is participating in Aero India with a number of officials, companies and aircrafts. Later, Defence Secretary met a delegation from Oman led by HE Dr Mohammed Nasser Al Zaabi, Secretary General, Ministry of Defence. The ongoing defence cooperation was reviewed and possible opportunities for increasing the depth and scope of engagements was discussed.

New Delhi, February 13, 2023: RattanIndia Enterprises Ltd. (REL), launched a new drone delivery platform, ‘L-series’ by its company TAS (Throttle Aerospace Systems).This new platform is designed to meet the increasing demand for deliveries using drones from the industry. L-Series is stable, secure, it can carry significantly higher payloads and is designed to work across low, medium, and high altitudes. Company earlier had a Med-copter series focused on the healthcare sector; this new series helps in massifying drone delivery usage across industries. L-Series is designed, developed, and manufactured in India. L-Series starts with the launch of two new VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing) products L- 20 and L-15 capable of carrying payload weights of 20 and 15kgs respectively. These products can fly for up to 45minutes, Cruise speed of 32.4 km/hr(9 meters / sec), operate at a maximum altitude of 5,500 to 6,000 meters above MSL (Mean Sea Level). These drones are very easy to deploy, can be made ready to fly in just 5 minutes and can be operated by a two-member team. Anjali Rattan, Business Chairperson of RattanIndia Enterprises Limited said, “Drone delivery market is expected to reach $32 billion (~INR, 2,50,000 Cr) by 2031 as per the market estimates. We spotted this segment very early and have been innovating in this space for a while. The launch of a new drone delivery platform opens a wide range of use cases across the commercial drone delivery market for us. NeoSky and TAS’s L-Series is a significant progress from the existing Med-copter series, and we are looking forward to setting new benchmarks in the delivery drones’ industry. Our drone delivery category has four products now and this is just the start.” Nagendran Kandasamy, CEO of TAS said, “After successfully completing the BVLOS trials for our Med-copter series, we started looking at the challenge of higher payloads as that is the only way to scale up drone delivery industry. This helped us in launching the L-series platform with an initial payload of 20 and 15kgs. These products are fully autonomous from takeoff to landing and comes with many ‘fail safe’ options to keep the flight stable. These products also perform many pre-flight checks before starting the flight. We are extremely excited about the launch of these products.”

New Delhi, 8th Feb 2023: In a major boost to indigenisation of defence equipment under Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi’s vision of ‘Aatmanirbhar Bharat’, Ministry of Defence has approved the proposal for indigenous manufacture of 41 sets of Modular Bridges for the Corps of Engineers of the Indian Army. These game-changing bridges have been designed and developed by Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) and shall be produced by Larsen & Toubro (L&T) as DRDO-nominated production agency. The contract for the procurement of Modular Bridges was signed with L&T on February 08, 2023 at an estimated cost of over Rs 2,585 crore. Each set of Modular Bridge shall consist of seven carrier vehicles based on 8×8 Heavy Mobility Vehicles and two launcher vehicles based on 10×10 Heavy Mobility Vehicles. Each set shall be capable of mechanically launching a single span fully decked 46-meter assault bridge. The bridge can be employed over various types of obstacles like canals & ditches with quick launching and retrieval capabilities. The equipment is highly mobile, versatile, rugged and capable of keeping pace with wheeled and tracked mechanized vehicles. The modular bridges will replace the manually-­launched Medium Girder Bridges (MGB) that are currently being used in the Indian Army. The indigenously designed and manufactured Modular bridges shall have many advantages over the MGB such as increased span, less time for construction and mechanical launching with retrieval capability. The procurement of these bridges will give a major boost to the bridging capability of the Indian Army on the Western Front. The project will showcase India’s progress in designing and developing world class military equipment and pave the way for enhancing defence exports to friendly countries.

New Delhi, 6th Feb 2023: In last 1 year, a total of 63 passengers have been placed in “No Fly List” for such period, as recommended by the airline’s Internal Committee, constituted in accordance with Civil Aviation Requirements (CAR), Section 3- Air Transport, Series M, and Part VI titled “Handling of unruly / disruptive passengers”. These include 02 (two) incidents of urinating that have come to the notice of Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) in last 01 year. As per the provision mentioned in CAR, a ‘No Fly List’ is maintained by DGCA containing specific information related to the passenger involved, contact details of identification documents, date of occurrence, sector, flight number, period of imposition of ban etc. The majority of passengers placed in “No Fly List” were for violation related to not wearing mask or not obeying the instructions of crew members. As regards specific incidents related to urination, following action was taken by DGCA for non-compliance to applicable regulations: 1) AI-102 flight, New York to New Delhi dated 26.11.2022. (i) Financial Penalty of Rs.30,00,000/- (Rupees Thirty Lakh only) has been imposed on M/s Air India. (ii) Financial Penalty of Rs.3,00,000/- (Rupees Three Lakh only) has been imposed on Director Flight services of M/s Air India. (iii) License of Pilot in Command suspended for three months. 2) AI-142, Paris to New Delhi dated 06.12.2022. (i) Financial Penalty of Rs.10,00,000/- (Rupees Ten Lakh only) has been imposed by DGCA to M/s Air India. This information was given by the Minister of State in the Ministry of Civil Aviation Gen. (Dr) V. K. Singh, (Retd) in a written reply to a question in Rajya Sabha.

Mumbai, 3rd February, 2023: AirAsia India announced that the airline would be moving all domestic operations to the newly launched T 2 at Kempegowda International Airport, Bengaluru from 15th February. The majority of departures will be facilitated via aerobridge. Bengaluru is the home base and largest hub for AirAsia India, and will operate 43 daily departures connecting Bengaluru to Delhi, Goa, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Pune, Jaipur, Lucknow, Ranchi, Kochi, Chennai, Visakhapatnam and Surat. The airline will also operate connecting flights from Bengaluru to Imphal and Srinagar on its network. Speaking about the move, Aloke Singh, President, AirAsia India, said, “As we continue to grow and expand, we are pleased to announce the relocation of our operations to the new Terminal 2 at our home base of Bengaluru. The new terminal operations will serve as a catalyst for our Bengaluru operations, one of the largest with 43 daily departures.” Adding to this, Hari Marar, MD & CEO, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL), said, “We are gearing up to welcome the passengers of AirAsia India to BLR Airport’s new Terminal 2 (T2), which is set to offer them a distinctive experience. BLR Airport is seeing a strong rebound in passenger traffic as the number of passengers and flight movements have steadily climbed over the last few months. With the additional capacity that is available at T2, we are now well-equipped to handle this growth and serve as the new gateway to India.”

New Delhi, 3rd Feb 2023: After being successfully implemented at three major Indian airports,Ministry of Civil Aviation has confirmed that it will add more airports in the list by March 2023 for biometric boarding system using Facial Recognition Technology under Digi Yatra. This will provide seamless and hassle-free experience for passengers at airports. The main objective of Digi Yatra is to enhance passenger experience by eliminating the need for verification of ticket and ID at multiple touch points and to achieve better throughput through existing infrastructure using a Digital Framework. The project is under implementation stage. The expenditure on implementation of Digi Yatra is done by Airport Operators. To give wide publicity to Digi Yatra, Airport Operators and Airline Operators are doing in-flight announcements, publicity through boarding passes, providing help desk support and displaying banner and films etc. at the airports. Publicity is also being done through Social Media.Airports Authority of India (AAI) has awarded the work for implementation of Biometric Boarding System at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Varanasi airports. Digi Yatra is to be implemented across airports in a phased manner. In first phase, Digi Yatra has been launched on 01.12.2022 at Delhi, Bangalore and Varanasi Airports for providing passengers contactless, paperless check-in and boarding process based on facial biometrics. The implementation of Digi Yatra under phase I is also planned at Kolkata, Pune, Vijayawada and Hyderabad Airports by March 2023 and across various airports in the country in phased manner. Digital transformation of aviation sector is an ongoing endeavour. As per requirement, the digitisation of various processes in aviation sector is undertaken. M/s Dataevolve Solutions has built FRT based Digi Yatra Central Ecosystem. It has been selected through a national start-up challenge run by NitiAayog under the Atal Innovation Mission. Digi Yatra is a voluntary facility for providing passengers seamless and hassle-free experience at the Airports. In the Digi Yatra process, there is no central storage of passenger’s Personally Identifiable Information (PII) data. All the passenger’s data is encrypted and stored in the wallet of the passenger’s smartphone and shared only for a limited time duration with the airport of travel origin where passenger’s Digi Yatra ID needs to be validated. The data is purged from the system within 24 hours of flight. Facilities with implementation of the Digi Yatra provides Touchless Passenger Validation through FRT which results in saving time at various touchpoints like entry to airport, Security Hold Area (SHA) and Boarding Area with no CISF intervention.

New Delhi As part of continuously improving Air Navigation Services (ANS) infrastructure at its airports, the Airports Authority of India has recently commissioned Facility Performance Category-I Instrument Landing System (ILS) for Runway-31 at its Birsa Munda Airport at Ranchi in Jharkhand. The new ILS replaced the existing facility that had completed its recommended life span.Birsa Munda Airport, Ranchi has been witnessing a steady increase in passenger movement. The new ILS that has been installed at the airport catering higher passenger movement is manufactured by M/s Indra (Normarc), a leading manufacturer of Radio Navigational aids systems in the world. The new facility has an improved ILS Localizer Antenna System that will help in precision approach of all aircraft landing at the airport in all weather conditions. With a project cost of approximately Rs.5.67 crore, the new ILS has been commissioned with effect from 9thJanuary 2023 for operational use at the airport.The complete installation, alignment, testing and flight inspection of the new system has been done in-house by AAI’s Radio Construction and Developments Unit /Flight Inspection Unit (RCDU/FIU). The Instrument Landing System is a standard ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization) precision approach landing aidthat is used to provide accurate azimuth as well as descent guidance signals for guidance to aircraft for runway landing under normal or adverse weather conditions. An ILS has two main sub-systems i.e. the Localizer and Glide Path System which provide lateral and vertical guidance respectively to a landing aircraft. A Distance Measuring Equipment (DME) collocated with Glide Path or Markers are also installed as part of ILS to provide the distance from the touch down on the runway to the landing aircraft. ILS provides lateral and vertical guidance which is necessary for a landing aircraft to fly a precision approach.The ILS facility is considered to be a highly accurate and dependable means of navigating to the airport runway in all weather conditions.