Kingfisher Airlines has to infuse more funds to stay afloat: Auditor

MUMBAI: Auditors of debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines have said that the company will have to infuse more funds if its wants to stay afloat, even as the carrier hoped that government would reduce ATF prices and taxes which will help it improve its finances.

The carrier's ability to meet its financial obligations depends on fresh infusion of funds, its auditors B K Ramadhyani & Co said.

Referring to a statement by Kingfisher that although its networth has eroded the financial results have been prepared on a "going concern basis", the auditors said, "The appropriateness of the said basis is inter alia dependent on the company's ability to infuse the requisite funds for meeting its obligations."

Kingfisher has reported a loss of Rs 468.66 crore in the quarter ended September 30, 2011, against Rs 230.81 crore in the same period last year. The company attributed the loss mainly to higher fuel prices.

The company, however, hoped that the government will reduce aviation turbine fuel prices and sales tax, which in turn would help the cash-strapped carrier improve finances.

"The reduction of prices of aviation fuel and reduction of sales tax on such fuel, which is under active consideration of the government with introduction of stringent cost reduction and control measures, will have positive impact on the working results of the company," the airline said while responding to the 'Limited Review' by its auditors.

It further said that in future, the airlines will have sufficient income to take care of deferred tax liabilities.

The airline was forced to cancel many flights because of mounting losses and has also sought help from banks to meet their short-term capital needs.

In the footnote to its financial results, Kingfisher had said that "having regard to improvement in the economic sentiment, rationalisation measures adopted by the company...the request made by the company to its bankers for further credit facilities..."

"...these interim financial statements have been prepared on the basis that the company is a going concern and that no adjustments are required to the carrying value of assets and liabilities."

Kingfisher had suffered a loss of Rs 1,027 crore in 2010-11 and is estimated to have debt of over Rs 7,000 crore.

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Neutrinos Travelling Faster Than Light

The international research team that found neutrinos traveling faster than light has done it again.

It conducted another set of experiments and again found neutrinos that exceeded the speed of light.
As in the first experiment, the researchers fired high-intensity, high-energy beams of muon neutrinos from the CERN SPS accelerator in Geneva toward the LNGS underground laboratory in Gran Sasso, Italy, 454 miles (730 km) away. They then measured the speed at which the neutrinos traveled.
This time, however, they used very short beam pulses rather than long beam pulses.
While the latest experiment appears to confirm the accuracy of the timing measurement, more scrutiny and independent measurement are needed before a definitive conclusion can be reached.

Gran Sasso Redux

The experiments are being conducted by the Opera Collaboration. This time, the scientists fired off pulses 3 nanoseconds long, separated by intervals of up to 524 nanoseconds.
This let them more precisely measure the extraction times of the protons that ultimately lead to the neutrino beam.
The 524-nanosecond interval is much longer than the uncertainty in the arrival time, physicist Ethan Siegel wrote. This let observers know definitively which pulse of protons neutrinos spotted in the detector came from.
A neutrino is an electrically neutral elementary subatomic particle with a small mass that usually travels at speeds close to that of light.
About 20 clean neutrino events were measured at the Gran Sasso lab this time around, and they were precisely associated with the pulses leaving CERN. This confirms that Opera's timing measurements were accurate the first time around, the researchers stated.
CERN is the European Organization for Nuclear Research.

What the Experiment Indicates

The latest batch of experiments resolves two questions Siegel had previously raised: whether the results of the first batch could be a statistical fluke, and whether the neutrinos detected were biased in some way.
The new results narrow the possibilities down to two, Siegel told TechNewsWorld.
These are that either "neutrinos can indeed travel faster than light," or there's a "systematic bias" in the way the Opera researchers are measuring the transit time for the neutrinos, Siegel said.

No Mas!

However, this Gran Sasso experiment may have run its course, contended Michael Witherell, vice chancellor of research at the University of California, Santa Barbara's physics department.
"I think the Opera team did remove some of the concerns about the time structure of the neutrino beam that concerned scientists studying the earlier paper," Witherell told TechNewsWorld.
"I am not sure what more they can do using this experiment," Witherell added. "At this point, the only thing that will really change our understanding is to have one or more experiments agree or disagree with Opera's measurement."

Checking the Results Again

Teams working on two other experiments at Gran Sasso -- Borexino and Icarus -- will next year begin cross-checking Opera's results independently.
Borexino is an experiment focusing around solar neutrino physics being conducted by an international team of researchers. Icarus looks at the usage of liquid argon detectors to study neutrinos.
"It will be very difficult for Borexino and Icarus to conduct these tests directly" because their equipment doesn't let them conduct timing measurements accurately enough, Siegel said.

The Cold Eyes of Outsiders

Two other groups of researchers will seek to duplicate the Gran Sasso results.
They are Japan's T2K experiment and the United States' Minos experiment.
Minos "is the best candidate for this going forward" because it's claiming its measurements will be "a factor of five or so" better than what Opera's doing now, Siegel remarked.
Minos and T2K may be able to eliminate some biases that might exist in the Gran Sasso experiment.
"If there is a problem in, for example, determining the distance or time delay from CERN to the Gran Sasso Laboratory, these experiments [at Minos and T2K] should not have the same problem," UC Santa Barbara's Witherell pointed out.

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Aircraft Nano composites that Provide Early Warning System for Structural Failures

Nanotechnology is already having an impact on air travel, as evidenced by EasyJet’s testing of a nanocoating that will reduce wind drag and fuel consumption.

But if current research into new adhesives based on nanomaterials proves effective, the future of aircraft manufacturing could be altered significantly beyond just coatings and into the actual structures of the aircraft.

Researchers at the University of Toronto are looking into the use of multifunctional nanocomposites and adhesives that would be used in joining techniques for primary flight load structures and serve a double purpose of providing an early warning system for stresses on these structures and possible future failures.

This line of research builds on the already developing practice of using composites and adhesive bonding in the place of mechanical fastening or welding, such as with the new Airbus A380.

The University of Toronto researchers are working with carbon nanotubes to develop their multifunctional adhesives (smart adhesives) due to their electrical conductivity.

Earlier this year, I covered research coming out of MIT that would use carbon nanotubes in a method for detecting internal damage to composites.

In the MIT research, an electrical current would be applied to the composites that would heat up the carbon nanotubes and allow the use of thermographic camera for detecting flaws without the cumbersome need for heating the entire surface of the aircraft. 

The Canadian researchers are attempting something a bit more ambitious in that the method "employs a novel network recognition approach to determine current continuity and critical percolation level."

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