Tag Archives: Dallas

Cathay Group surpasses 100,000-passenger milestone on a single day

The Cathay Group has achieved a significant milestone by carrying more than 100,000 passengers, the most on a single day since the start of its rebuild.

On December 15, 2024, Cathay Pacific and HK Express, the Group’s two passenger airlines, carried a combined total of 100,856 passengers, surpassing the 100,000-passenger mark on a single day.

Since the milestone was first reached, the Group exceeded the 100,000-passenger mark on a total of eight days during the year-end travel peak ending December 31, 2024.

Ronald Lam, CEO, Cathay Pacific Group, said, “We are thrilled to have concluded the year 2024 on a high note with yet another milestone. The past year saw unprecedented progress and expansion for the Cathay Group, thanks to our people’s dedication and efforts. In particular, I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to our global front line teams, who have been working tirelessly over the holiday period to ensure that our customers enjoy a smooth journey as they explore new destinations or reunite with their friends and families during the holidays.

“We are pleased to have successfully completed our two-year rebuilding journey, during which we were firmly focused on adding more flights and destinations for our customers and our home hub. A new chapter has now begun for Cathay.”

Cathay Pacific recently resumed its seasonal service to Cairns, Australia and will be launching several long-haul routes in 2025, including Hyderabad in India, Dallas in the United States, and Munich and Brussels in Europe. In addition, HK Express added Shizuoka, Japan to its network recently and will be launching a new service to Sendai, Japan later this month.

Together as a Group, Cathay Pacific and HK Express have reached 100% of pre-pandemic flights from January 2025. It is projected that the two airlines will operate passenger services to 100 destinations around the world within 2025, marking another meaningful milestone for the Cathay Group.

With the commissioning of the Three-Runway System, Hong Kong has entered an exciting new era. As the city’s home airline, Cathay will continue to contribute to Hong Kong’s status as a world-leading international aviation hub, connecting Hong Kong, the Chinese Mainland and the world.

Eraaya acquires Ebix Inc.; Robin Raina to continue at the helm

Ebix Inc. has completed its Chapter 11 restructuring process, and emerged as a financially and operationally stronger company. The 12,000+ employee company is now debt-free worldwide.

On Friday, 30 August 2024, Ebix exited Chapter 11 in a period of less than 9 months, and the restructuring plan blessed by the US courts became effective. Earlier, on August 2, 2024 the Court had confirmed the plan.

This complex, cross-border matter resolution involved Sidley lawyers and staff from the New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Century City, Houston, Dallas, Washington, D.C., San Francisco, London, Singapore, and Hong Kong offices; besides professionals from multiple multinational accounting and investment banking firms.

Ebix is one of the few rare companies that entered Chapter 11 with a trailing 12-month Ebitda of approximately USD 145 million, on account of non-operating loans being called by its lenders.

With 23-years of consistently profitable results and a shareholder return of 27,500 per cent at one time, Ebix entry into Chapter 11 on non-operating grounds was sudden and rather unexpected. Today, when Ebix has exited Chapter 11, it has reason to feel confident about its future on various grounds –

• Consolidation into Eraaya – With Eraaya LifeSpaces Limited emerging as the successful plan sponsor, Ebix Inc worldwide results will now be consolidated into Eraaya, a publicly traded company on the Bombay Stock Exchange. Ebix will continue to be a US domiciled company, following the laws of the respective international geographies it operates in. Eraaya’s investment into Ebix will not affect any of Ebix’s responsibilities adversely in any geography, as the Company will continue to operate as usual.

Ebix Founder, Robin Raina, will continue to serve as CEO and Chairman of Ebix. A visionary entrepreneur who is the brain behind the Ebix worldwide franchise, Robin Raina has pioneered innovative concepts that propelled Ebix to be featured five times on Fortune’s 100 Fastest Growing Companies list. With a 23-year track record of profitability and delivering over 275x shareholder return at one time, Raina epitomises consistent financial discipline.

Integrated Group Vision – With the goal of ensuring maximisation of shareholder return for Eraaya shareholders, and to deliver world class compliance and consistent growth & profitability, Robin Raina has also been appointed as the Chairman of the Board for Eraaya.
Ebix, Inc will continue to be a US Company. All US contracts will continue to be serviced from the US company, with no changes to the Company’s tax ID, workers compensation or clients’ agreements, that will continue to be serviced following US law as usual.

Ebix’s international subsidiaries across the world that service clients in more than 75 countries today, will continue to operate as usual. Ebix’s entire international senior management that has spearheaded Ebix’s growth and profitability story for more than two decades, will continue as usual and will lead Ebix through its future growth.

All international client agreements will continue to be serviced as such, following the existing client and partner agreements under the laws of the respective country, while being serviced by the same Ebix personnel who have always been interacting with clients, as usual.
Ebix’s Indian EbixCash operations will continue as usual. With a “Phygital” strategy that combines over 650,000 physical distribution outlets in India and many Southeast Asian Nations, to an Omni-channel online digital platform, the Company’s EbixCash Financial exchange portfolio of software and services encompasses domestic and international money remittance, foreign exchange (Forex), travel, prepaid gift cards, utility payments, lending and wealth management across 75+ countries including India.

EbixCash’s Forex operations are carried out primarily through 82 retail branches, retail kiosks in 28 international airports, including Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Kolkata, 12 seaports, over 250 franchise partners across 69 cities, as well as offered through more than 1200 corporate clients, more than 27 bank clients, and 5-star hotels in India. EbixCash, through its travel portfolio of Via and Mercury, is also one of the leading non-bank travel exchanges based in India and catering to approximately 517,000 agents and approximately 17,900 registered corporate clients.

EbixCash’s financial technologies business offers software solutions at the enterprise level for banks, asset and wealth management companies and trust companies across 75+ countries. EbixCash’s Bus Exchange business delivers on-Demand technology solutions to power information technology across 14+ state roadways corporations and tens of thousands of buses. EbixCash’s business process outsourcing services provide information technology and call centre services to a variety of industries.

Ebix has already secured investments from marquee US investors Watch Hill Capital and Melanie Lane Partner Series. The intent of Eraaya and Ebix is to continue to grow its international investor base.

Ebix CEO and Chairman, Robin Raina said, “Today marks a significant milestone in Ebix’s 48-year history. Through the relentless efforts of our team of advisors and employees worldwide, we are moving forward in an incredibly strong market position with an exciting road ahead of us. Now with a solid financial foundation, a leaner, more efficient operating model, and plans to raise more liquidity to invest in our business, Ebix has outstanding potential to drive long-term profitable growth. Both in the U.S. and around the world, we are poised to capitalise on our industry leadership, deep operational expertise and our iconic global brand.”

Raina said, “Ebix 2.0 intends to be lean, efficient, and focused on consistent profitable growth. We are aware that our strength is our focus on pioneering world leading on-Demand software Exchanges, our distribution reach, our understanding of worldwide regulations, our dominance in various sectors in specific geographies and the barriers to entry in the highly regulated sectors that we operate in. We intend to leverage all these strengths while continuing to deliver world-class services to our clients worldwide.”

He added, “I am quite confident that this is only the beginning phase of delivering even greater value to our stakeholders. Thank you to the Ebix team around the world and to our new investor group, and to our customers, franchisees, providers and partners for your confidence and support during this process. I must add that as the Eraaya Chairman, I am equally committed to delivering consistent profitability, growth and shareholder return to the Eraaya investor base also.”

Air India likely to connect 3 new destinations in the USA

Air India is likely to add new destinations in the US namely Los Angeles, California and Dallas, Texas after a gap of nearly 10 years, according to sources.

Currently, Air India is the only Indian airline that operates flights to the US connecting five destinations –San Francisco, Chicago, New York-JFK, Newark and Washington.

 

The last US destination launched by the airline was San Francisco in 2015. In total, Air India operates over 120 flights per week, both ways, between India and the US.

“Plans are being prepared to expand our services to LA and Dallas. There is a large Indian diaspora in the vicinity of these two megacities and no direct flight connections from there to India,” sources told FE.

When contacted, the airline did not comment on the story.

According to sources, there is a high demand for direct flight connections to India from the diaspora market. “The flight services are expected to start before the end of 2024. We plan to deploy our fleet of Boeing 777s to these destinations.”

In addition, Air India will start non-stop services between Delhi and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia on September 15.
The airline plans to deploy two-class configured Airbus A320neo aircraft to operate the daily flight on the new routes.

Furthermore, Air India will start non-stop services between Bengaluru and London Gatwick (LGW) next month. The airline will use its Boeing 787 Dreamliner aircraft on the route, featuring 18 business class and 238 economy seats.
Eventually, the airline plans to deploy its A350s into service for flights to continental North America. For now, the A350-900 will replace the currently deployed Boeing 777-300ER and Boeing 787-8 Dreamliner on the Delhi-London Heathrow route as of September 1.

Presently, the aircraft is operated on the Delhi-Dubai-Delhi and Mumbai-Dubai-Mumbai routes. The airline now has six A350s in its fleet.

 

‘Delhi airport among world’s top 10 busiest airports of 2023’

Delhi airport has been named among the world’s top 10 busiest airports for 2023 in a list topped by Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport.

The Indira Gandhi International Airport in the national capital is ranked tenth while Dubai and Dallas airports are at the second and third positions, respectively, according to the Airports Council International (ACI) World.

Releasing the list on Monday, the ACI also said the global total passenger forecast for 2023 stands close to 8.5 billion (850 crore), reflecting a remarkable recovery of 93.8 per cent from pre-pandemic levels and 27.2 per cent higher than 2022.

“Notably, international traffic recovery drew nearer to that of domestic traffic, emphasising its essential role in propelling the industry’s resurgence and expansion,” it said.
Among the top 10 busiest airports, five are in the US.

At the tenth place, Delhi airport handled more than 7.22 crore passengers in 2023. In 2022, the airport was at the ninth position.

Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport is on top and it handled over 10.46 crore passengers last year. It is followed by Dubai Interntional Airport, which saw more than 8.69 crore passengers, and Dallas Forth Worth International Airport. The latter handled over 8.17 crore passengers in 2023.

Others in the list are London’s Heathrow airport (4th spot), Tokyo’s Haneda airport (5th), Denver International Airport (6th), Istanbul airport (7th), Los Angeles International airport (8th) and Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport (9th).

The passenger number for an airport includes emplaned and deplaned passengers, and those who transited have been counted once.
“The top 10 airports representing close to 10 per cent of global traffic (806 million passengers), witnessed a gain of 19.8 per cent from 2022 or a gain of 0.7 per cent vis-a-vis their 2019 results (801 million pax in 2019),” ACI said in a release.

In terms of aircraft movements (landings and takeoffs) also, Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was on top.