The hike in passenger traffic is likely to have a positive impact on the financial health of air carriers, most of which have been reeling under heavy losses for the past two years

Air traffic in the first two months of this year showed a major growth of 19.2% compared with the same period last year, a development that could bring some relief to the loss-making Indian aviation industry, reports PTI.

The total passengers carried in January and February this year was 80.56 lakh as against 67.61 lakh in the first quarter of last year, official figures released on Monday showed.

The hike in passenger traffic is likely to have a positive impact on the financial health of the air carriers, most of which have been reeling under heavy losses for the past two years.

Like previous months, Jet Airways and its subsidiary JetLite together led the way in flying most passengers—10.28 lakh in January and 10.08 lakh in February, followed by Kingfisher and its low-cost subsidiary Kingfisher Red with 9.08 lakh and 8.77 lakh and Air India (Domestic) with 7.34 lakh and 6.63 lakh.

They were closely followed by no-frills carrier IndiGo that carried 6.25 lakh and 5.77 lakh in the first two months of this year, followed by SpiceJet with 5 lakh and 4.65 lakh and GoAir with 2.2 lakh and 2.11 lakh. Full-business class airline Paramount carried 72,000 and 62,000 passengers respectively, the figures showed.

Jet and JetLite jointly bagged over one-fourth of the market share in the two months, carrying 25.2% and 26.3% of the total passengers during the period.

Kingfisher and its subsidiary flew 22.2% and 22.7% followed by Air India (Domestic)—18.0% and 17.2%—while Paramount flew 1.8% and 1.6% of the total passengers.

IndiGo led the low-cost airlines by flying 15.2% and 14.9% in January and February this year followed by SpiceJet with 12.2% and 12% and GoAir with 5.4% and 5.5%.

The figures relating to average seats per kilometre and revenue per km showed that an increasing trend in both capacity and demand for air travel continued in February this year as well.

The overall cancellation rate of scheduled domestic airlines for February this year was 1.5%, while the overall On-Time Performance (OTP) of scheduled domestic airlines was recorded at 79.4%.

The directorate general of civil aviation (DGCA) has already directed all the 70 foreign carriers to file reports about their on-time performance on a monthly basis. Of them, only 47 have filed the reports so far. The on-time performance of these foreign airlines has been 73.7% for departures and 73.6% in arrivals.
 

Facebook's Hyderabad centre will house online advertising and developer support teams and provide round-the-clock, multi-lingual support to its users and advertisers globally

Social networking site Facebook on Monday said that it will set up its office at Hyderabad to support the growing number of users, advertisers and developers in India and globally, reports PTI.

Facebook has seen exponential growth in recent months and has more than eight million active users in India, it said in a statement.

The rising popularity of Facebook has also come as a threat to various other social networking sites like Orkut, MySpace and Flickr. It has more than 400 million active users worldwide.

The centre will house online advertising and developer support teams and provide round-the-clock, multi-lingual support to its users and advertisers globally, it further said.

The new centre in Hyderabad will supplement operations out of California, Dublin (Ireland) and a recently announced location in Austin (Texas). It has already started its hiring procedure for the Hyderabad centre.

"We expect our new office in Hyderabad to tap into the region's strong pool of talented people who understand operations and technology, and help us more effectively serve the needs of our users, advertisers, and developers around the world," Facebook director for global online operations, Don Faul said.
 

The IPO guidelines could take a month’s time in coming and market regulator SEBI will take the final call, said IRDA

The initial public offering (IPO) guidelines for the insurance sector are likely next month, the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority (IRDA) said on Monday.

"The IPO guidelines could take a month’s time (in coming) and the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI) will take the final call," IRDA chairman J Harinarayan said.

He further said that the valuation norms for companies has been finalised and sent to the Institute of Actuaries.

"Once their (Institute of Actuaries) committee clears it, it will be sent to SEBI and then the market regulator would take a call," he added.

IRDA, which has been working on the guidelines along with market regulator SEBI, is likely to come out with a draft for public comments before issuing the final norms.

Several private sector insurance companies, including Reliance Life, have shown interest in tapping the capital market to augment their resource bases.

The government had proposed to ease the norms to allow companies to list after five years of operation, instead the current 10-year practice.

As per the Insurance Act, promoters having 26% stake can offload equity after 10 years of operation of the company.

The legislation also empowers the government to reduce the mandatory period.