indian carrier to join OW?
 

Since kingfisher has become bankrupt, will another indian carrier join OW? I will travel to AMD primarily. Since not many international cities and airlines are connected to AMD, it would be nice if an Indian carrier joins OW so I can connect to AMD via another Indian city on award travel. I know Qatar will join soon but I'm not sure about their award availability especially in December.

I am a *A gold based out of PHL and thinking about switching to AA ff because of all the good reviews for plat exc level.

Also will any Indian airlines join other alliances?

Kingfisher may be getting assistance from EY soon. If it happens and Kingfisher resumes flying isn't known, nor is if they would still join the alliance. Oneworld has Sri Lankan joining soon, which covers a number of cities in India from CMB.

There is also the question of Jet. They have similar problems to Kingfisher (just not quite as bad) and are also being looked at by EY. If they go to oneworld or Star remains to be seen.

A lot of people here seem to think that air travel is inherently safe and all airlines adhere to at least some government-mandated level of safety. That's a beautiful thought and correct to some level, but if the truth were known the worriers among us would pick carriers more carefully.

pprune dot org is an interesting place to get pilots' perspective on the matter, though they tend to espouse an impractically high standard and refer to us as "SLF" - "Self-loading-Freight".

What I'm saying here is that I'd be reluctant to book Kingfisher because of its management (and financial state) regardless of which alliance it belongs to.

FWIW AF is on my same "reluctant" list because they seem to have no problem launching aircraft manned by a crew that culturally or technically can maneuver it into a stall at cruise and fail to recover as it relatively slowly decends into the ocean with the loss of all aboard, a completely unforgiveable act imo. [/DIATRIBE]

John

I don't agree with your premise to begin with, but this is just ridiculous. Nowhere is >10K fpm a "relatively [slow]" descent. You're awfully cavalier with your slinging of statements like "no problem launching..."

Air travel IS inherently safe, in all but the most remote of places.

I suppose you similarly don't fly AA because engines and tails have fallen off, don't fly Delta because they attempt to land in thunderstorms and encounter microbursts.

Who do you fly?

Cheers,
Cameron

ummm he has a point on Air safety in India

I mean there have been numerous incidences of Air India pilots having never done pilot training.

On the other hand many other carriers have heaps of ex military pilots who are probably amongst the best in the world

Isn't it that 9W has code share agreements with OW airlines such as CX?

indian carrier to join OW?
 

They may have it with cx. But I want to have award booking ability from USA to AMD. Not sure if i can do that for 9w using AA ff.

Most of subsaharian Africa and Russia aren't THAT safe...

I flew Pulkovo Aviation from Helsinki to LED 5-6 years back... one of the scariest flights of my life!

They had a good four minutes to figure it out, although by the last minute they may not have had enough altitude to recover the plane even if they'd understood what they needed to do. Which, alas, they didn't.

I fly all those carriers, cheerful Cameron. Even, reluctantly, those US regional carriers that exist because they can pay their pilots $20,000 a year and pretend they aren't working another job or two and are actually awake and alert in the cockpit.

That doesn't mean I don't keep in mind the shortcomings of each in making my choices. And if the traveling public was more informed and applied the same consideration, the economic pressure might eliminate some of the problem carriers or force them to amend their attitudes.

Flying is not inherently safe. Engines suffer uncontained explosions (e.g. A380), power distribution stuff self-destructs (two 787 incidents now, hardly friendly in an ETOPS airplane), tails fall off, fuselages develop unscheduled holes. Some of those events can be recovered by an experienced aircrew - which alas costs money.

On the human side, not all airlines have successfully emplaced Cockpit Resource Management (CRM) - happy-talk for assuring that the guys up front work as a team at all times; a few use barely-legal co-pilots, some who are paying for the privilege of sitting there and building up enough time to get a paying job; at least one is accused of influencing captains to save money by uploading less fuel than they would prefer; and some are blessed with a cadre of 'cowboy' pilots who are less conservative than their peers - they might, perhaps, skip de-icing because they 'know' the snow will blow off during the takeoff run.

So I make choices.

9W does not have code-share with CX.

I know Indigo is low cost-but Oneworld should try and integrate them

They are the only ones who make a profit in current conditions

Their aircraft are always clean,planes mostly on time

They are India's largest airlines and will grow bigger-much bigger than the others as it is the only one with low financial problems

Even spicejet will go bust soon-and needs to be saved by foreign investor(supposedly from Hong Kong).

Whoa, as a former pilot (fortunately not in the US) I agree with your comments about CRM and some other things but when you cite culture as a reason for an aircraft crash, don't be surprised when there's some backlash. No matter how strongly you feel about the incident, it comes across as extremely disrespectful.

Now if you're referring to company culture and you are personally familiar with the cockpit culture at AF, disregard everything I said. But I somehow doubt it.

I know what you mean. I'm much more comfortable with the fuselage holes which are scheduled in advance and the captain announces them at the start of the flight. :D