Continued demise of the aviation industry

Kingfisher halts ticket sales ahead of Dubai shutdown

Arabian Supply Chain,

25 March, 2012

Indebted Indian carrier Kingfisher Airlines has stopped issuing tickets to UAE travel agents ahead of plans to cease its flights to Dubai from Sunday.

“We have had access to Kingfisher Airlines removed from our system around two weeks ago,” Basel Abu Alrub, managing partner of Dubai-based travel agency Utravel confirmed.

“This really doesn’t come as a surprise to us as we have been hearing various news and reports about the airline’s condition and therefore we have issued an internal circulation more than a month ago advising our ticketing agents to stop issuing Kingfisher Airline tickets,” he added.

The move comes as it was reported the airline, which is battling US$1.3bn in debt, plans to stop flying to Dubai from Sunday and cease all its international operations from April 10.

Routes to Hong Kong and Singapore have already been canceled and flights to Dubai, Colombo, Kathmandu, Bangkok will stop from March 25, according to a report by The Economic Times newspaper.

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China Eastern’s Annual Profit Falls 7.7% on Higher Fuel Prices

Business Week,

25 March, 2012

China Eastern Airlines Corp. (670), the nation’s second-biggest carrier by passenger numbers, said profit fell 7.7 percent last year as fuel prices rose.

Net income dropped to 4.58 billion yuan ($727 million), from 4.96 billion yuan, the company said in a filing to the Hong Kong stock exchange today. That missed the 5.1 billion-yuan average of eight analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales rose 12 percent.

The aviation industry in China in 2012 will “face significant pressures as a result of complex and changing domestic and international operating environments, significant cost increases and general downturn in the global aviation industry,” the carrier said in the statement.

For article GO HERE