Daily Service to Dubai From Trichy

AI is planning to increase its already existing thrice  a week service from Trichy – Chennai – Dubai to seven days a week from Mid February. This is in response to the overwhelming response to this service.

AI is also planning to make Trichy a hub for its Trichy – Chennai – Dubai and Trichy- Chennai – Kualalumpur Service ( Coming soon). The Trichy Malaysia service will be thrice a week to start with, but looking at the overwhelming response to Air Asia service from Trichy, this will also become a seven day service very soon.

 

Tourism Package to SriLanka from Trichy

SriLankan Holidays, a travel wing of Srilankan Airlines, is offering ‘Second-Passenger-Travels-at-One-Rupee-Only’  holiday package for Indian Tourists to visit Srilanka’s South west Coast and Colombo. The packages start from Rs.13599 (round trip) and include visa on arrival , accommodation on Bed & Breakfast and airport Transfers. They are available till April 30th , 2009. Jetwing Travels and  Walkers Tours are the exclusive partners in this travel package.

I am not sure how economical this is.  May be some of our visitors from Srilanka can sound off about the value.

Source: TravelBizMonitor

 

Trichy Madurai Express Train

Trichy is getting a new train to connect itself to Madurai daily. In this year’s railway budget, out of 43 new train services , 5 new services are in TN.   The train schedule is not announced yet but can be expected that it runs according to the office schedule in both directions.

Similarly, they need to increase the speed of the trains that run to chennai from trichy. It feels like it takes awful lot of time in both direction. We will see.

 

Srirangam Station gets a new Subway

The ordeal of passengers who has to move from Platform 2 and Platform 3 towards Platform 1 will be eased by the proposed subway which will connect these platforms in the station. The work for implementing this started this week with all the three platforms suspending traffic on them. The traffic should have resumed by Thursday. The flooring, fixing tiles on the side walls, roofing, lighting, construction of stair cases leading to the platforms will be undertaken after this.

The estimate is Rs. 40 Lakhs and should take about 45 days for completion.

This should help the normal public to some extent in Srirangam.

 

MRF Factory in Perambalur

MRF is planning to open a  manufacturing unitwhich will manufacture 2 wheelers’ and 4 wheelers’ tyres. It will be located in Naranamangalam in perambalur ( 80 kms from trichy). The plant is expected to provide employment to about 5000 people .  No timetable is given for the opening of the factory yet.

Source: Business Standard

 

Air India Express Expansion

On Friday the low cost subsidiary Air India Express inducted another Boeing 737-800 aircraft increasing its fleet size to 21 aircraft. The new aircraft inducted has ‘shikara on the Dal Lake in Kashmir’ on one side of the tail and an ‘image of a large expanse of the Rajasthan Desert’ on the other side.

In addition to adding aircrafts, the AI expressis also planning  to increase their services.

AI Express is proposing to increase frequency on the Chennai-Trichy-Dubai route from three flights a week to seven flights a week.

Air India Express will also increase the frequency of its flights from three to six flights a week on the Trichy-Kuala Lumpur sector.

You can see the pictures of the new aircrafts here.

 

AI – Super Saver Scheme

Air India has reintroduced the Super Saver scheme again which gives some value for more frequent travelers who combine International and domestic travel in AI.

Under the scheme, a business class coupon with four tickets will cost Rs.47,400 and the one with eight tickets, Rs.1,11,032 (including all taxes). The coupons will have a validity of three months and six months respectively. These can be used to travel on all domestic sectors of the national carrier with codes IC and AI.

The economy class coupon (four tickets) will have a validity of three months and can be used on all the domestic sectors of AI except Thiruvananthapuram-Delhi, Kochi-Delhi, Kozhikode-Delhi, Trichy-Delhi and Coimbatore-Delhi.

Source:The Hindu

 

Air Asia to Malaysia

Air Asia starts its first service from Trichy to KualaLumpur from Nov 01 2008 although the security clearance from DGCA is still awaited.

• The service will be daily.
• The airline would deploy an all-economy class Airbus 320, with a passenger capacity of 180.
• The flight from Kuala Lumpur would arrive to Trichy at 8.55 a.m. and depart at 9.25 a.m. Airports Authority of India officials at the Tiruchi Airport have already cleared the schedule.

 

Airport Expansion Delayed

Right Off the bat, Trichy airport expansion is not delayed. In fact, it is going on as planned. But the AAI has expressed concerns that the expansion work on 17 of the 35 airports targetted for expanded runways are not going according to the plan. This is mainly because of the lack of land availability from State Govt to do the work. The only airport included in this list that is in TN is pondicherry.

The work on these projects was scheduled to start from April this year but the lackadaisical approach of the state governments was delaying the work,” an AAI official said .

Why these expansions are important now more than ever. Because the changing fleet mix in the airline sector.

“These airports have short runways and are not safe during heavy downpour,” ICPA general secretary Vikram Yadav said. “Earlier we had mid-sized aircraft landing at and taking off from these airports, but now Airbus and Boeing aircraft too operate from these airports. So it becomes necessary to expand the runways,” Yadav added.

So what is different here when compared to all the other “plans” that get delayed in India.

The regional airlines, which were planning to launch services to new destinations, put their plans on hold, thanks to the uncertainly over runway expansion. “Operating at smaller airports is a tricky situation and riskier too. We would expand air operations once runways at these airports are upgraded,” MDLR Airlines chief operations officer U.K. Bose said.

That’s the impact not only to the city but to the entire region.

Source: The Econiomic Times

 

Rane Brakes – New Facility

Rane Brakes opened a new facility in Sethurapatti Village, about 25 km from Tiruchi last month. This plant is projected to produce two million disc brake pads, about Rs 15 crore in value. Over time, the plant’s capacity would be ramped up to 10 million by 2012. The new manufacturing facility is the company’s fourth and will make nonasbestos- based (therefore, environment-friendly) disc pads.