Qatar Airways Cabin Crew recruitment in Chennai

Qatar Airways is holding a cabin crew recruitment drive in Chennai on 15th June 2019.

Jet Airways Employees looking for a job or others aspiring for a job in aviation industry may try their luck.

Note: Prior online registration is required to attend walk-in interview. Will be held at Trident Hotel near Chennai airport on GST Road. Do check the qualifications.

More details here at the official website. All the best.

Qatar Airways Mumbai-Miami return for 52k INR

Qatar Airways has a return ticket to Miami USA from Mumbai for a few date combinations in September/October 2019.

It is not super cheap but a fairly good price to visit USA. If you have some plans for USA this year, you might want to check the Qatar Airways fares. Miami/Fort Lauderdale can be a base to visit various south and central american countries like Bahamas, Mexico, Colombia etc. Even lots of Cruise options are available from Miami.

For USA trips, you can get a 48 hour hold for free on Qatar. (Create a booking, you get price guarantee for next 48 hours within which you can pay and confirm)- No need to pay immediately.

I visited Washington this April May for a return ticket of 48250 from Chennai. It was a decent experience. Around 50k INR return ticket is pretty good deal for India-US. If you are lucky you may get it for even 35-40k INR with China Southern or Air China, but trust me, Qatar will give a lot better experience overall.

Similar: Miami from above * Visiting Bahamas- Flight vs Cruise * Experience booking various US flights * 

Malindo wants to fly Subang-Seletar Singapore

I read a news this week that Malindo Air wants to fly to Seletar, Singapore.

Most of us know only one airport in Singapore- Changi (airport code SIN). This is where almost every flight in and out of Singapore operates from.  Thanks to above news, I learnt that there's a second active airport in Singapore, known as Seletar.  (Airport code: XSP)

The news is that Malindo air is looking to fly to Seletar airport in Singapore.

Why? What would be the advantage of flying to Seletar airport instead of Changi?
1. Less airport fees- cheaper flight tickets: Seletar will probably charge lot less in airport fees and other charges compared to Changi, which is more popular, in demand and space/capacity constrained. Thus Malindo will be able to take passengers to and from Singapore cheaper.

2. Move in and out of airport quicker:
Changi is huge while Seletar is a much smaller airport- less walking, less crowd, less waiting- so passengers can move in and out lot quicker.

Right Now Firefly (FY) is the only airline operating from Seletar airport-they operate some 6-7 daily flight to Kuala Lumpur.

Malindo is looking to fly to Seletar from Subang airport  (Airport code: SZB) in Malaysia- Subang was Malaysia's main airport before the much bigger KLIA 1 and 2 came into being. Read more here.

Kuala Lumpur-Singapore route is like a bit too long to drive and too short to fly. For a 45 minutes flight, you will end up spending 3-4 hours at the airport before and after the flight, while road travel can take about 6-7 hours. Flight between two less popular airports can possibly cut down that airport time- arrive like one hour before the flight, walk out within 10-15 mins, total trip taking less than 2-2.5 hours. Operating flights to these airports won't help connecting passengers, but I am sure there'll be enough takers to fill up the small turbo prop.

Seletar airport is about half an hour away from Changi.

Let us see when the newer flights to Seletar takes off! Seletar is not yet getting listed on Malindo website, so we need to wait and watch.

Seletar airport official website

Malaysia bans hidden charges in airline ticketing

I've some news from Malaysia where I was this week. The aviation watchdog, MAVCOM (Malaysian Aviation Commission, equivalent of India's DGCA) has made it mandatory for airlines to disclose final pricing. The new guidelines will be effective from 1st of June and require airlines to show the final payable amount in their advertisements and website pricing upfront.

Airlines typically display a lower amount upfront- like base fare and as a passenger progresses thruogh the booking process lots of extras are added- tax, convenience fee, surcharges and so on, often making it difficult for customers to compare between two or more flights they might be considering and often triggers a false notion that flight is cheap, as final amount payable could be 2x the amount initially seen.

Airlines around the world follow these tricks, albeit with some exceptions (like Southwest). Even airlines in India do the same- flight ticket could be 899 Rs, but will then include a 500 Rs "convenience fee" and various other hidden charges, making the final transaction uneconomical.

With the MAVCOM directive, airlines selling tickets in Malaysia need to disclose final amount payable. Malindo Air, AirAsia, Malaysian are some of the Malaysia based airlines who will have major impact of this. I guess other international airlines selling tickets to Malaysian passengers will also have to comply with this. Need to see if Malaysian airlines extend same to Indian customers or will continue with existing process for India market.

Another important rule is processing fee shouldn't exceed more than 5% of ticket price in case of non-refundable tickets. (This means airlines can't announce a Rs 899 ticket and then ask for Rs 400 convenience fee on top of it)

Read it online here

We need DGCA enforce similar rule here in India.

There's nothing left in Jet Airways- is there a case for investing?

Jet airways has stopped flying and the lead banker SBI is trying to find an investor to resurrect the airline. There's lots of emotions around the airline that was flying for 25 years but is there any reason someone would like to pump in 10s of thousands of crores of rupees?

Prima Facie, No.
What assets is Jet Airways left with?
A. Planes? No. Most planes are taken back by lessors, or in the process of being done so, some are already re-leased to Spicejet or other airlines. Most planes left on the ground are cannibalized for spare parts etc.  So the core asset of an airline- airplanes is not there.

B. Employees? Best of the employees would have already found jobs in other airlines or other companies. Various key executives including CEO and CFO have resigned. Rest of the employees, if required, can be hired fresh in the name of new airline, probably for lesser salary, than spending crores on their unpaid salaries and resurrecting jet.

C.Airport slots? No. They are being slowly given away to other airlines. Doesn't make sense to invest insane amount on Jet Airways to get these slots as for fraction of that money one can bid for them at airports at get it.

D Other assets? No. Like office, ground vehicles etc: these aren't just worth it- most are probably leased/rented and not fully owned.

E. Brand Image? People's memory is short. Starting new airline might be better proposition than trying to leverage Jet Airways brand name- or whatever left of it.

Liabilities:
Overdue loans- close to 10000 crores to Banks (loan + interest)
Overdue payments to vendors, aircraft lessors, employee salaries, airport fees, fuel bills, unprocessed customer refunds on cancelled flights and so on- would probably add up to another 10000 crores.

So one is looking at a liability of 20000 crores just to clear existing dues and start from zero. A serious investor may be able to convince banks and other vendors to take a haircut- say 50% loss and pay only the half- even that is 10000 crores of liabilities. That is a massive 1.5 billion dollars USD. Plus a few thousand crores more to get the planes ready for flying and keep flying in a loss for few months at least, till customer confidence returns and load factor reaches satisfactory levels to break even.

Let us assume someone is ready to pump in 10000 crores- what should be their priorities?

• Employees would want all their unpaid salaries cleared
• lessors want their dues settled
• Banks will definitely want a part of their loans to be repaid
• Vendors all over will press for pending payments
• 1000s of passengers are yet to get their refunds for cancelled flights

So new owner will be squeezed from all corners before they can realize any benefit of their investments. If you were to invest 10000 crore to settle existing dues and another 5000 crore to support the airline till it recovers to profitability, how long do you think Jet Airways will take before giving positive returns on the investment? 

Most well funded airlines themselves are running in loss world wide, as the industry is unforgiving. Passengers go to where they can get cheap tickets- there's not much of a loyalty. Airlines are caught between trying to increase fares to reduce loss vs offering discounts to fill up the plane. If I had 10000 crores I would probably start a new airline afresh, which would make a much smarter and less expensive proposition than pumping all that money on a black hole like Jet Airways.

Naturally there's not been much bids for Jet airways despite some initial expression of interests. Etihad seems to be willing to put in a bit more funding provided all loans are written off and another majority investor is available, along with various other conditions- they are trying to protect their existing 24% stake.

Latest news is Darwin partners have made an offer of 14000 crores. Need to see how serious this is and how things shape up in the days to come.  Turning around an airline is difficult but not impossible. Spicejet was on the verge of collapse on 17th December 2014, but its founder managed to avert crisis and take airline back to profitability. Spicejet's problems were much smaller compared to Jet. There're more examples in the corporate world where companies everyone wrote off have risen back like a Phoenix.  Will Jet Airways be that lucky? Let us hope so.

San Diego approach- short video

San Diego is a town south of Los Angeles, California. While arriving here from San Francisco, I had a super scenic view from my window of SouthWest flight. Take a moment to enjoy the same.

Watch on youtube here

Places to see in San Diego- USS Midway Museum * 

My Experience with SouthWest Airlines USA

About half of my flights during USA trip were on South West. They don't appear on skyscanner or other portals, but when I checked on their website, had cheapest fares for most of the destinations I wanted to visit. Thus I booked several flights with them.

• Washington to Bahamas via Fort Lauderdale
• Bahamas to Fort Lauderdale
• Costa Rica to Fort Lauderdale
• Austin to Las Vegas
• Las Vegas to SFO
• SFO to San Diego

Southwest has some unique features why they are liked by many fliers
-Cheapest fares
-Two check-in bags included
-Light snacks and non-alcoholic beverage included
-Simple and efficient booking- no cheap tricks like showing low fares and then adding taxes, baggage fee etc. What you see in first result is what you pay.

But one issue with SouthWest is that their flights are not listed on travel sites and 3rd party portals like Skyscanner, Kayak etc. They sell tickets exclusively on their website, so we need to check and book on Southwest.com only.

Similarly if I had known better I would have flown BWI to FLL instead of IAD to FLL, but didn't know this to search.

No assigned seating. You need to be little lucky to get the seats you prefer or be seated together as family.

Of the six flights listed above, one flight had major delay. All other flights were on time or even ahead of time. I got into A group only twice, all other times it was B group, even when I did web check-in within minutes of it opening up.

Almost all the flights were full, except only 2 flights which had some empty seats.

Flight 1: Washington to Fort Lauderdale
Early morning flight, fell asleep after sometime, missed out on snacks and drink. So couldn't figure out what snacks they serve.

Flight 2 and 3: Fort Lauderdale to Nassau & back:
Short flight, citing not enough time, only juice were served. No snacks. Crew would go to each passenger, ask what would they like to drink, make a note and then serve them one by one. No pushing a trolley and serving as they go through the aisle. On the way back, citing turbulence even juices were not served. My SouthWest Snack experience now had to wait another 8 days.

Flight 4: San Jose Costa Rica to Fort Lauderdale
Web check-in was not allowed for this flight as it needed visa check.

Major flight delay:
One of my flights were delayed by close to 6 hours. I was waiting to board at San Jose Costa Rica to FLL, USA. But the inbound flight had to return to FLL mid air for an aircraft swap due to technical glitch. Got email from airline in 5 phases- first 30 min delay, then one hour, then another... Southwest's twitter team was responsive, communicated that cancellation is not likely and flight is being returned for an aircraft swap. While the gate still showed "on time", passengers were informed of the delay at SJO airport by SouthWest staff and were given a 100 USD voucher for use in a future flight within one hour. Also got a 10 USD food coupon.

Eventually reached Fort Lauderdale by midnight, instead of earlier planned 6 PM.
If the delay had been communicated before I left for airport I could have spent more time in city. But I understand this delay couldn't be predicted precisely due to developing situation.

This was one mistake I did during my planning- should have checked SouthWest website and booked San Jose-Austin via Houston instead of booking San Jose-FLL and then Spirit flight from FLL to AUS. Like I said, since Southwest itinerary didn't appear on Skyscanner I missed checking this route manually.

On this flight I had my first Southwest snacks. Two packs of light snacks- not even 100 grams in total. This was a disappointment. Snacks did nothing to quench hunger. Absolutely nothing. Even a sandwich would have been better. Because of this one reason alone, I am hesitant to call SouthWest a full service airline.


WiFi available on select planes to watch entertainment etc. Browsing costs 8$.

On subsequent flights I realized that standard issue is only one pack of this snack. Probably because of major delay they gave 2 snacks on SJO-FLL flight.

Flight 5: Austin-Vegas
Terminal Confusion in Austin- Internet literature said SouthWest operates out of South terminal in Austin airport. But when we arrived at Austin airport's main terminal, there was a Southwest board there and another board saying "South Terminal"- we proceeded towards South Terminal but then there were no more signs as to how to reach South Terminal. Even Google maps wasn't helping. We did a circle and came back to main terminal, down down near the SouthWest board- all their flights were operating from here only.

Crew try their best to make announcements interesting.. (like "Back of the plane also goes to Vegas, please come back here, there're more seats)

Got great views of Grand Canyon from the window seat.

Flight 6: Vegas-SFO
Late night flight- the cheapest one at some 49 dollars- cheaper than Greyhound bus. Was on time, slept through

Final flight- SFO-SAN
Early morning flight, paid about 58$, again cheaper than what bus or train would have cost, arrived 15 minutes earlier than scheduled. Standard SouthWest Experience.

Southwest flights out of SF- Almost all airports I visited, saw maximum Southwest Aircrafts.

So overall, was good flying SouthWest. I wish they serve better food/meals on at least flights longer than 2-3 hours.

Air France Concorde exhibit at Air & Space Museum, Washington

Concorde was an iconic airplane that served the skies for about 27 years between 1976 and 2003. Made in Europe, Concorde's USP was speed. It could fly twice the speed of sound and could reach its destination as much as in half the time taken by next best aircraft. At Mach 2.04 or some 2100 kmph, London to New York would take about 3 hours (even today, this route takes about 7 to 8 hours)

Viewing a Concorde is a treat to any aviation enthusiast due to its historic significance, the fact that only a dozen or so of these planes were made and pressed into service and more so because of its unique shape- long, sharp pointed nose, wide wings and large underbelly.

I had only seen a Concorde in video so far. During recent trip to Washington, I could see it for real in Air and Space Museum near Washington Airport. Here're some pictures before we talk further.

While Concorde was a technological masterpiece and amazing supersonic jet, it was a financial misfortune. Aircraft was made for speed, not space- so it could carry just about 100 passengers. (An Airbus A320 today seats about 180 passengers). Aircraft was super expensive to produce, so it got only two major airlines- Air France and British Airways as its customers, the flights were super expensive to operate too and the cost had to be recovered from the just 100 tickets that could be sold, so each ticket had to be insanely expensive- putting off regular tourists. Only rich businessmen who valued time and/or wanted to reach destinations asap would pay such high fares. Thus the Concorde flights proved to be economically unsustainable and airlines began to cut the fleet and flights. Concorde routes were largely transatlantic- between Paris/London and major cities in USA/Brazil east coast.

Add to this, there was a crash in year 2000. Air France flight AF4590 crashed soon after take off as engine took debris from the ground into it, burst it into flame and aircraft couldn't lift off to safety. About 109 people (everyone onboard) died and 4 more on ground also burned to death. [Watch this video]. 3 years after this, all Concorde fleet was permanently grounded and the beautiful aircraft entered history.

 Below: Boeing 707 and Concorde

 

Above: Engine intake
Below: Magnificent view from top

Today we're looking at bleak feature for Airbus A380 as no airlines seem to want to order it-it is super jumbo with 500+ seats and is built with a purpose somewhat opposite to Concorde. While Concorde needed 100 people who could pay super expensive fares to reach destination in half the time, A380 needs airlines to find out 500+ passengers for each flight to make the flight economically viable. Thankfully A380s are still in service, no major accidents and may get some revival in future if market dynamics change.

Air France donated one of the planes to Smithsonian National Air and Space museum. Today this plane sits in a confined space along with hundreds of other aircrafts in Steven F Udvar-Hazy centre of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, very close to Washington's Dulles International Airport. More about this museum in a separate post later. I only wish they'd given some more free space around the Concorde and also allowed us to take a look at its interiors.

Standby for more posts from my US trip.