The BoardingArea.com homepage stopped updating for some time over the last couple of days. If you are like me, you probably go to the homepage to see what all the wonderful bloggers at BoardingArea are writing, instead of visiting their individual blogs. It is a wonderful single page view of all the people who matter in the Airline Mile and Hotel Point Blogoshpere. When it came back up yesterday, it of course picked up in real time and all the wonderful posts for two days were missed. I had been …

The state of Airlines in India is not good. There have been several blog posts by other bloggers on the state of Kingfisher Airlines. They are cash strapped and headed for big trouble if they do not get a cash injection from somewhere. The latest blow is the canceling of most of their international flights. Jet Airways, the largest privater airline in India and usually looked upon as a stable, growing airline, too now has run into trouble. They have been asked to clear past dues in taxes or have …

Don’t know if I succeeded in making this post’s title sound like something out of the tabloids. But, the whole off-again, on-again relationship between Star Alliance and Air India is truly one for the tabloids. (Sorry no paparazzi photos of Air India in a compromising position. They are having trouble paying their fuel bills though…). The net-net is that Air India does not have its act anywhere near to being together but Star Alliance sees India as too lucrative a market to let some bureaucratic failures trip up the potential …

Yesterday was indeed a sad day for India and Indian Commercial Aviation. As Flying with Fish has been predicting on his blog for a few days and finally confirmed yesterday, Air India has been booted from Star Alliance before they could even formally join. The dropping of Air India was done three and a half years after Air India was invited and was still unable to fulfill the basic requirements required by Star Alliance to be a member of the worlds largest Airline Alliance. Fish does a great job documenting …

As Air India progresses on its ‘final approach’ to become a member of the Star Alliance, it brings to an end (if they do actually make this July-end deadline) of the longest any airline has ever taken to join an Alliance. This long drawn out path to Allianceship, if I may, has further tarnished Air India’s already not-so-great image. I personally have mixed feelings about Air India. In full disclosure, I have only flown Air India on an international trip on one round trip between the US and India AND …

Air India’s (AI) official mascot is ‘Maharaja’ which translates to the great king/prince in English. Probably that is why Star Alliance has treated AI in a princely fashion. AI has been trying to join Star Alliance since 2007. Since then, the joining deadlines have been postponed time and again to accommodate the sluggish ‘king’. Finally, tired of the ‘lazy’ king, Star has announced a final deadline of 31July 2011.
On its website, Air India recently announced that they have met the Minimum Joining Requirements (MJR) for joining the alliance. This was …

Washington, DC’s Dulles airport (IAD) is on the grow. It has recently added an intra-terminal train, a new runway and hopefully, will soon add a new terminal to replace the ugly C and D terminals. IAD has also had some airline additions and one loss. As I reported earlier, Air India had started serving IAD but soon dropped it with no reason given. The Air India signs were recently removed from the airport signs, dashing any hopes I had of them returning.
Two recent additions to IAD have been Bolivia’s Aerosur …

Rediff business recently published an article titled – Top Airlines of India. The article goes thru and talks about the top ten Airlines based in India. My first reaction was – India has ten airlines? Trust me, I am not too way off with that question. The number ten airline they list in the article has only four aircraft. Does it deserve to be in a top ten list? Why not just stop at top five? I see this as an over zealous reporter who had to make it top …

From 31st October 2010, Air India is switching all its routes from India to North America to non-stop routes.

This is a major shift in Air India’s strategy. Till now they had been leaning towards a Europe based hub, potentially Munich, Germany (MUC). This was in alignment with Jet Airways, their biggest competitor, which has a hub in Brussels, Belgium (BRU). Under the new strategy, Air India is making all its flights to US and Canada as non-stops on their new 77W and 77L aircraft. The 77W is a …

A few months ago I was at Washington Dulles (IAD) airport and took this picture of an Air India 777. Air India made a big deal of extending their New Delhi (DEL) to New York (JFK) flight to Washington, DC (IAD). This was exciting for me as this was the first single aircraft route from Washington DC area to India, a trip I make at least once a year. With Air India planning to join Star Alliance, I was even more excited, as we could now earn and redeem my …