Air India launches city check-in facility

The 'City Check-In' facility has been introduced at the national carrier's main reservation office at Safdarjung airport here.

"This facility will be available on all days of the week from 0930hrs to 1830hrs for the passengers having hand baggage only and for the flights originating from Delhi within 24 hours of the scheduled departure," a senior AI official said.

The city check-in facility would be beneficial for the corporates, business travellers and government officials as it would save their time at the airport, he said.

Air India will also be introducing check-in facility at Dhaula Kuan Metro station of the Airport Express Line to benefit armed forces personnel.

Trying hard to tide over its financial crisis, the national carrier has made efforts to improve its on-time performance (OTP), achieving 100 per cent on-time departure of its flights from Delhi five times this month.

The overall OTP of Air India this month has been over 96 per cent on the domestic and international networks, which has helped the national carrier to regain its lost flyers.

Air India's operational performance of August showed a significant improvement over the corresponding month last year.

While passenger revenue went up by 12.3 per cent, the network Passenger Load Factor (PLF) increased from 67.7 per cent to 70.3 per cent.

The PLF on the domestic sector showed a jump from 64.3 per cent last year to 73.1 per cent this year and yields also rose by 14 per cent across the network.

Air India has launched an Integrated Operations and Control Centre (IOCC) at Terminal 3 of the IGI airport here. The IOCC has helped the airline in real-time monitoring and reduction of delays and turn-around time.

Recently, Civil Aviation Minister, Vayalar Ravi reviewed the working of Air India, in which Civil Aviation Secretary Nasim Zaidi and newly appointed Air India CMD Rohit Nandan were also present.

Nandan presented the Minister the broad view on the overall improvement in the operational and financial performance of the company.