Deep in debt, Air India wins Asia's leading airline award

Despite the increasing problems, including debts and huge daily operational losses, the national carrier Air India has won two awards at the World Travel Awards.

The ailing Maharaja has been selected as Asia's leading airline in the Economy class and the country's leading airline at WTA awards function in Bangkok over the weekend. Airlines from over 30 countries participated in the competition.

"The awards reaffirm the trust reposed by passengers in the national carrier's proactive approach, persistent performance and undeterred commitment to customer satisfaction," the airline said in a statement.

Air India is sitting on a mountain of Rs 63,000 crore debt and has even been unable to pay salaries to over 32,000 employees for months now.

It connects 66 domestic destinations and 33 international markets every day, across US, Europe, Canada, Far-East, Southeast Asia and the Gulf.

Air India extends, modifies unlimited travel scheme

New Delhi: Air India has announced the extension of its short term promotion scheme, Silver and Platinum Pass aimed at providing air travel at competitive and affordable rates.

The Silver and Platinum Pass being offered in two variants for unlimited travel in economy and executive class on the domestic sectors of the national carrier will now be valid for fifteen days, the airlines said.

Passengers buying the Silver Pass can fly on economy class to any domestic sector of their choice at a fare of Rs 35,000 any number of times during the 15-day period.

Passengers who purchase the Platinum Pass can enjoy unlimited trips in executive class to any domestic destination at a fare Rs 75,000. This fare is inclusive of taxes, Air India said.

The passes are available for sale at the offices of Air India and its approved travel from September 21, 2011 and will be valid for travel up to January 15, 2012.

The day of commencement of the journey will be treated as the first day and fifteen days will be counted from the date of the commencement of the journey for determining travel validity, officials said.

Early to land, early to fly: Air India 93% on-time in September

New Delhi: Attempting to improve its image after the official auditor criticized it for the quality of its service, national carrier Air India on Sunday said it had achieved an on-time performance of nearly 93 per cent for the month of September.

The data is computed on basis of flights from from Sep 1 to Sep 23.

"Air India achieved 93 per cent on time operations (nationally) of its flights. And in the Delhi region, we achieved 96 per cent on-time performance for the fifth time in September," a senior Air India official in the operations arm told IANS.

According to the official, the news about the on-time performance was broken to the employees by the airline's regional director, north.

"In a message to all employees, the regional director appreciated the efforts put in for the milestone and also urged employees to be more customer-friendly," the official said.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) had, in a report released earlier this month, criticized the carrier on its service quality.

"Air India is no more a favoured airline for passengers. The services and criteria that benchmark a favoured and popular airline are absent in Air India," the report said.

The official said Air India was able to achieve the best ever performance at its biggest operations base in Delhi with an average of 96 per cent on-time performance.

The Delhi region for the flag carrier is biggest in terms of seat allocations with up to 100 departures and 14,000 seats available per day.

The airline had also extended a short-term promotion scheme till January. Under the scheme passengers can buy either a silver pass priced at Rs 35,000 for unlimited travel on economy class within 15 days or a platinum pass priced at Rs 70,000 for travelling on executive class on domestic routes.

"Passengers are happy with our effort to provide them with the most competitive prices while ensuring the best customer service," the official said.

TCS wins 5-year, multi-million dollar Deutsche Bank contract

New Delhi: Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) has been selected by Deutsche Bank as a strategic partner for their Production Management Transformation Initiative, within their Capital Markets Business Unit.

According to the latest press release by TCS, the home-grown IT services, consulting and business solutions firm will deliver a global application service desk, service operations and all other IT infrastructure library (ITIL) services to the bank at locations across seven countries.

These countries include USA, UK, Germany, Hungary, Philippines, Singapore and India.

“TCS will partner with Deutsche Bank to transform to an ITIL-aligned model, aimed at significantly improving service delivery through this framework of best practices,” said the release.

It added the team will leverage the concept of LEAN to eliminate non-value-added activities and provide cost efficiencies to the bank.

"Our extensive experience in IT transformation initiatives, industry-leading domain capabilities in financial services and long-term partnership approach allows us to offer superior value to Deutsche Bank as they look to leverage their strong market position,” said Ramanamurthy Magapu, banking industry solutions unit head at Tata Consultancy Services.

“We are committed to the success of this transformation initiative and will bring our very best capabilities to the engagement," he added.

India, China to grow rapidly, strengthen US economy: Geithner

Washington: US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner has identified India, China and Brazil as countries that will experience rapid growth in the coming decades, which he said would provide "consistent strength" to the American economy.

"It is very likely you're going to see India, China, Brazil -- the most populous countries of the world -- grow very, very rapidly in the coming decades. I think you're going to see that (will) be a consistent strength for the US economy," Geithner said at the 'America in the Global Economy Summit' here.

The Obama Administration has set an ambitious target of doubling its exports in ten years.

"The most important thing that will determine the pace of export growth over a five-year period of time is how fast does the world grow," he said.

"But US export growth has been really very strong in the earliest days of the recovery and I think it's encouragingly strong because it's happening across the American economy, from agriculture through manufacturing, to all the high-tech stuff and services," Geithner said.

"That shows, again, one of the great fundamental strengths of the United States, which is that because productivity growth has been so high here, because the basic dynamics of innovation are so strong, our financial system, even with the mess of the crisis, is still really better than any system in the world at allocating capital to innovators to support growing companies," he said.

Air India extends, modifies unlimited travel scheme

New Delhi: Air India has announced the extension of its short term promotion scheme, Silver and Platinum Pass aimed at providing air travel at competitive and affordable rates.

The Silver and Platinum Pass being offered in two variants for unlimited travel in economy and executive class on the domestic sectors of the national carrier will now be valid for fifteen days, the airlines said.

Passengers buying the Silver Pass can fly on economy class to any domestic sector of their choice at a fare of Rs 35,000 any number of times during the 15-day period.

Passengers who purchase the Platinum Pass can enjoy unlimited trips in executive class to any domestic destination at a fare Rs 75,000. This fare is inclusive of taxes, Air India said.

The passes are available for sale at the offices of Air India and its approved travel from September 21, 2011 and will be valid for travel up to January 15, 2012.

The day of commencement of the journey will be treated as the first day and fifteen days will be counted from the date of the commencement of the journey for determining travel validity, officials said.