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Airbus and Air India inaugurate pilot training centre in gurugram – The Times of India
MUMBAI: Airbus and Air India inaugurated a world-class pilot training centre in Gurugram, Haryana, said the airline in a press statement issued on Tuesday. “This benchmark facility will train more than 5,000 new pilots over the next decade to support the exponential growth of commercial aviation in India,” it said. The 50:50 joint venture facility was inaugurated by India’s minister of civil aviation, Rammohan Naidu Kinjarapu, in the presence of Air India CEO Campbell Wilson as well as Airbus Chief Executive Officer of Commercial Aircraft Christian Scherer. The new 12,000 sq mcentre will be equipped with 10 Full Flight Simulators (FFSs), along with modern classrooms and briefing rooms. The facility is designed to train pilots for the Airbus A320 and A350 aircraft families. The courses are approved by both the DGCA and EASA, ensuring India’s pilot training meets the highest global standards. “Air India is in an expansion mode with 570 new aircraft on order and the new pilot training centre at our Aviation Training Academy in Gurugram, a part of which is being executed with Airbus, will help train and upskill pilots who will fuel Air India’s ambition of becoming a world-class airline. This facility is a major step forward in our transformation journey and in making Air India and the Indian aviation industry more self-reliant. With our partners Airbus, we are playing our part in building the aviation infrastructure that India needs as one of the world’s fastest-growing aviation markets,” said Campbell Wilson, MD & CEO, Air India. “We are very proud to partner with Air India and the Tata Group on this critical infrastructure project. The inauguration of the training centre is a testament to our shared vision for the future of Indian aviation. This is more than a joint venture; it is a strategic investment in the future of the Indian aerospace industry itself. India is a critical base for Airbus, and this state-of-the-art facility is a testament to our belief in its immense potential,” said Jürgen Westermeier, President and Managing Director, Airbus India and South Asia. The Gurugram facility will complement the four A320 Family FFSs at the existing Airbus India Training Centre in New Delhi. Together, these two hubs will house a combined total of 14 FFSs, creating a powerful training network. In addition, Airbus is collaborating with local partners to provide world-class maintenance training, ensuring a robust pipeline of technicians and engineers to support the future fleet. The pilot training hubs underline Airbus’ deep commitment to nurturing a comprehensive aerospace ecosystem in India. From manufacturing and engineering to digital innovation and maintenance, Airbus is actively building the foundations of long-term capability. A critical component of this strategy is human capital development as a cornerstone of India’s aviation boom. Through targeted investments in skilling, training, and human capital, Airbus is helping to build the essential backbone of an aerospace industry that will not only serve India’s growth story but also keep it aligned with global standards. These efforts are complemented by partnerships with leading academic institutions, including the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and the Gati Shakti Vishwavidyalaya, a unique transport and logistics university based in western India, to develop curricula, fund R&D, and create scholarships. These collaborations are designed to equip India’s young workforce with the competencies needed to power aerospace growth for decades to come.
Four major players in the travel industry have had their adverts banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for misleading customers.
The ASA ruled that Booking.com and hotel groups Accor, Travelodge, and Hilton all used “from” price claims for hotel rooms that overstated how many were available at the advertised rate.
With only a limited proportion of rooms genuinely offered at the advertised prices across various dates, the ASA deemed the promotions misleading and consequently prohibited their future use.
In Booking.com’s case, an ad on May 6 stated “Places to stay in Sheffield – Best Price Guarantee, and further text read “easyHotel Sheffield City Centre From £28”.
Booking.com said the dates and prices displayed were “dynamically chosen” by Google from data it provided, meaning they could vary for each user and search.
They believed the information displayed in the ad was accurate and not misleading.
The ASA said the data Booking.com provided showed that seven bookings were made at the easyHotel Sheffield City Centre for the advertised price in May.
It said it did not receive any other information from Booking.com, such as the number of dates on which rooms were available for £28, to enable us to make an adequate assessment of the proportion of rooms at the hotel available at the advertised price and therefore considered that the information provided was insufficient to substantiate the claim “From £28”.
The watchdog found Accor’s ad for £27 rooms at its Ibis Budget Birmingham Centre were only available for a night’s stay on July 30, and was therefore “not a true reflection of the price most consumers could expect to pay”.
It said consumers would understand the claims “Travelodge Nottingham Riverside From £25” and “Travelodge Swansea M4 From £21” to mean that a significant proportion of rooms at each hotel would be available at the advertised price.
However, it understood that the advertised prices were only available to book for a night’s stay on May 18.
In Hilton’s case, the ASA said it had not seen sufficient evidence to demonstrate that a significant proportion of hotel rooms were available at the advertised prices of £68 at Hampton by Hilton Hamilton Park or £59 at Hampton by Hilton Newcastle.
ASA operations manager Emily Henwood said: “Advertised prices must match what’s really available.
“If only a few rooms are actually offered at the price shown, or it only applies to a specific date, then this information must be made clear to avoid misleading people.
“Otherwise, it’s unfair to anyone trying to find a good deal or make informed choices about where to book.
“People should be able to trust the prices they see in ads and these rulings show that we will take action if the rules are broken.”
Travelodge said in a statement: “Travelodge takes its responsibilities under the ASA advertising guidelines seriously. The prices shown in the ads were generated from our live pricing feed and represented the cheapest bookable date available.
“We recognise that customers expect clarity and transparency in pricing, and we continue to work closely with Google to ensure all ad formats are clear and fully compliant. This particular ad format was removed prior to the ASA ruling, and we remain committed to transparent, accurate, and great-value pricing for all our customers.”
D.R. Horton signage stands in front of homes under construction at the Eastridge Woods development in Cottage Grove, Minnesota.
Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images
A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.
D.R. Horton, the nation’s largest homebuilder, is tapping an artificial intelligence tool from Portland, Oregon-based startup Prophetic to build more homes and address the country’s housing shortage.
Chronic underbuilding since the Great Recession has caused a deficit of roughly 4 million homes, according to analyses from several sources, including Zillow. The supply-demand imbalance has caused prices to rise over 50% from pre-pandemic levels.
Homebuilders are trying to respond but say that the cost of construction, along with the difficult and costly process for acquiring and developing buildable lots, is making that difficult.
“One of the largest challenges to providing affordable housing is the identification, acquisition and entitlement of land suitable for development. We are confident the insights provided by Prophetic are going to help us expand homeownership opportunities for hard-working American individuals and families,” said Jason Jones, vice president of data analytics at D.R. Horton, in a release.
Prophetic has developed an AI-native platform for land acquisition and development analysis. For any potential parcel of land, Prophetic’s software will pull every single zoning manual from every city and county in a state. The company said it is currently operational in 25 states and expects to be in all 50 by June.
“It’s an incredibly large, tedious, detail-oriented process to take tens of thousands of these zoning documents and extract the rules, not only efficiently, but correctly,” said Oliver Alexander, founder and CEO of Prophetic.
Among other things, the system looks at minimum lot size and minimum or maximum density setbacks, which differ by municipality and zone. It updates those quarterly.
“Then it tells you where that information came from, which is the key differentiator,” Alexander explained. “When you have that section title and the page that it came from, that builds trust, and then it becomes ultra-efficient, where you can analyze development potential in 30 seconds instead of two to three hours.”
Alexander said there are a little over 440,000 different ways to describe what you’re allowed to do on a piece of dirt in the states Prophetic has analyzed. Developers need to go through all of that information to figure out if they can build a single- or multifamily housing development on it.
The AI’s large language model-based analysis of these documents at scale can answer the questions and then feed that into search AI, which Alexander calls “the major unlock” – search plus the zone AI information together. At the ground level, with this AI, builders can figure out what they can build, where and how much at a much faster pace, making them more competitive with landowners.
“If you have that much of an edge in your speed to decision, you effectively control your entire market, because before anyone else can decide, you’ve tied it up,” said Alexander.
MUMBAI: Representatives of India’s capital market on Tuesday urged finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman to keep the securities transaction tax (STT) on cash equity lower than that of equity derivatives trades in the forthcoming Budget. They also suggested to the ministry that in case of a buyback of shares, tax should be imposed only on profits and not on the total buyback value, sources said. Currently, STT in the equity cash market ranges from 0.025% to 0.1% while in the derivatives market the rates are between 0.125% and 0.1%. A lower rate in the cash segment could lead to more participation in the segment compared to the derivatives section. Of late, govt, policy makers and regulators are looking at ways to rein in trading and speculative habits of retail investors using equity derivatives products, especially options.On Tuesday, the group of people also suggested to the finance minister that the rate of short-term dividend tax which domestic investors pay should be in line with what NRIs pay. tnn
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