Category Archives: Aviation

After recently completing 45 years of uninterrupted service to the Indian subcontinent, Ethiopian Airlines has announced that it will expand its India operations further by adding Ahmedabad to its network. Esayas Woldemariam Hailu, Managing Director (International Services), Ethiopian Airlines, said, “We are very happy to celebrate this milestone of 45 years uninterrupted service to Mumbai, which was one of our earliest destinations and is one of our strongest markets in Asia today. We have plans to expand our operations in India for cargo. We have finalised our preparation to launch freighter operation to Ahmedabad in the month of March 2017. We have contributed our part in forging closer investment, trade and people-to-people ties between Africa and India.” The airline is currently operating New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru. Hailu added, “We don’t have a specific date yet for the new service. But we know that we will be operating our brand-new Boeing 777 on this route that has a capacity of 100 tonnes.”

PC Sharma, CEO and whole time director, TCIEXPRESS, notes, “The budget allocation of Rs 39,61,354 crore on infrastructure development and of selected airports in Tier 2 & 3 cities will help us penetrate in strategic and remote locations, enhancing our services in those regions as well. The focus on infrastructure development in the budget will contribute towards the exponential growth of logistics industry, as it will help in robust operations and efficient deliveries, particularly for the express delivery sector. We are also optimistic about the timely implementation of GST, which was also mentioned in the budget.”

Expressing hope, Sarini Sachdeva, CEO, Aardour Worldwide Logistics says, “The announcement of Rs 39,61,354 crore on infrastructure development will help the logistics industry to grow much faster. Today, infrastructure forms the major reason that logistics industry is lagging behind.” “Moreover, for any country, air connectivity to undeserved and unserved regions could provide impetus to economic development and growth of such regions, and contribute to a more uniform and equitable growth in economic activity across the country. Per capita flights in India is about 0.08 compared with around 2.5 and three in the US and the UK, respectively. India has about 450 airports and airstrips but only 75 have scheduled operations, as per the recently unveiled national civil aviation policy,” she informs. “Around 66.5 per cent of India’s total air traffic comes from Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Hyderabad airports. These six cities would require new airports by 2025-26 and in some cases, much earlier. Currently, cargo from smaller airports fly to big cities. Once the smaller airports became viable the industries in Tier 2 and Tier 3 will also flourish,” Sachdeva adds.

Ravinder Katyal, Director Air Freight & Co-Load – ISC, DSV Air & Sea, says, “This Union Budget will allow businesses to run through, closer by airports and thereby decentralise the process and save the logistics cost. However, we really need to review that will the investment of Rs 39,61,354 crore on infrastructure development help improve the commercial/cargo facilities or not and the development of Tier II Airports on PPP mode will be for cargo also or only for passenger terminals. (If the same happens for cargo too, this will help better control or lower logistic cost and automatically time will be saved as the facilities will be close to their manufacturing hubs).”

Talking about his anticipation from budget 2017-18, says Bharat Thakkar, Past President and Permanent Member – Board of Adviser, ACAAI & Co-Founder, Zeus Air Services, says, “ACAAI has met with Justice R. V. Easwar and made submissions on simplification of income tax, wherein the issues of withholding tax and tax deducted at source on freight difference by airlines have been explained. Thereafter, this matter has also been submitted to Hon’ble Minister of Finance, Secretary, Department of Finance including Prime Minister’s office (PMO) for appropriate action in line of ease of doing business.” The proposed Goods and Service Tax (GST) is needed but with few recommendations such as international transportation of goods including freight forwarding and ancillary services in relation to international transportation of goods such as customs clearance, warehousing, storage, cargo handling, packing, unitisation, etc. should be zero rated. Then, the concept of centralised PAN-based registration must be retained, whereby any service provider in the international transportation segment can have a centralised registration and discharge applicable tax through the GST Portal. Further, it has been recommended that the tax payer should be centrally registered at the principal place of business or registered office and undertake compliance from the central location for all activities throughout the country. The place of supply for international transportation of goods, freight forwarding and related services should be the location of the billing address of the recipient of the services as specified in the invoice issued by the service provider. It is not understood why ease of doing business is being side tracked dual and registration is being introduced The credit should be based on the invoice raised by the service provider without insisting on the …

“It is call of the time that the Finance Minister takes suitable steps to refurbish and revive the airports which still lack the infrastructural support to their users. Efforts must also be made to increase the regional connectivity by roads by providing highways to achieve an accelerated reach between the manufacturing unit and the transporting carrier. Further, abolition of complex policies, aggressive price cuts and multi-tiered tax system are vital followed by introduction of GST,” wishes Sunil Kohli, Managing Director, Rahat Cargo. “Entrepreneurs should be encouraged for ‘ease of doing business’ and focus should also be made towards introducing a single independent authority to facilitate ‘Digital India’ and ‘Make in India’ implementation. It is also expected from the FM to undo the tedious documentation process and bring in the methods to do away with paper work and switch to the digital mode instead,” Kohli persist. The logistics industry is highly fuel intensive and its operating cost is largely dependent on the petroleum prices hence a liberal taxation may be considered on such products. To promote a larger quantum of exports, the FM should also consider an enhanced incentive or fiscal concessions to the exporters.

“As National Civil Aviation Policy (NCAP) is reaching its final stages, we look forward to faster implementation of the measures outlined in the policy which will give an overall boost to the aviation industry. As India requires more operational airports, to meet the ever increasing demand of passenger and cargo, we await announcements on development or rehabilitation of airports to benefit domestic and international trade,” says Mike Chew, CEO, AISATS. “Indian airports serve as a transfer hub for various intercontinental routes such as Europe – Australia and Europe – South East Asia. But the transshipment route has not been explored to its full potential. This is a disadvantage when competing in the global market and impedes the capture of intercontinental traffic. Also as the consumers are becoming more discerning, on time delivery of goods has gained much more importance than ever before. As mentioned in the draft policy, we would expect shaping up of few steps such as setting up of Free Trade and Warehousing Zones to facilitate transshipment cargo and expediting development of necessary infrastructure for Express Delivery Services (EDS) to cope up with double digit growth in e-commerce,” he continues. “As air cargo is the barometer for country’s economic health, we expect that the upcoming Union Budget 2017-18 to have provisions to accommodate decisions on few key elements such as infrastructure status to cargo facilities, tax benefits to air cargo operators and freight forwarders, incentives on capex for developing cargo handling facilities, streamlining and simplifying of custom procedures, shifting to paper-less air cargo, allocation of more space for cargo at the airports, availability of all relevant central government authorities through a single window at the cargo terminals, 24×7 …

ACFI launches its chapter in Ahmedabad, Gujarat under the Chairmanship of Tushar K Jani, President, ACFI in the presence of other board members, associations, and air cargo logistics trade members from Ahmedabad. Samir Mankad, Ex. Director, GSEC, Ahmedabad was elected unanimously as the Chairman of ACFI Ahmedabad Chapter. Mankad requested the support and cooperation of all the members of air cargo logistics trade of Ahmedabad to achieve their aspirations and taking ACFI Ahmedabad, Gujarat to new growth.

Mumbai International Airport (MIAL) has launched a dedicated cargo terminal for bonded and heavy export cargo at city’s Chhatrapati Shivaji International Airport (CSIA) which is one of the busiest airports in Asia. With this, CSIA’s cargo handling capacity will increase to seven lakh tonne annually from around four lakh tonne at present. The heavy cargo includes machinery, non-perishable pharma, automobile, engineering products, etc. The terminal will start operations from December 14, 2016. According to MIAL, the new process management deployed, along with incremental export capacity, will reduce the dwell time to a considerable extent. “The new facility will complement the existing Export Zone by increasing efficiency through faster admittance of cargo, swift turnaround of vehicles and overall reduction in handling dwell time with new process management. With this additional facility, CSIA can now offload more than 50 trucks at a time,” said an airport insider. Earlier, the average offloading capacity was about 30 trucks.

Lifted by solid growth in cargo traffic, Cathay Pacific Airways plans to increase frequency of its freighter services to Indian cities. The Hong Kong based airline has freight services to six Indian cities and there are 25 freighter departures every week from India. A sign of significant market potential in the freighter segment, the carrier has seen an eight per cent jump in cargo volumes in first nine months (January-September) of this year. “At this moment, we plan to optimise our network base in India and want to increase our frequency here,” Mark Sutch, General Manager – Cargo Sales & Marketing, Cathay Pacific. The carrier provides freighter services from Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The twice-a-week service between Kolkata and Hong Kong was launched in March last year.