Foreign flight hope rises for new airlines

New Delhi: The civil aviation ministry feels airlines that want to fly abroad should not find their ambitions thwarted by current regulations that insist on five years’ experience.
The ministry wants to clear such proposals on the basis of an airline’s technical and financial strengths.
The ministry will ask the group of ministers (GoM) on civil aviation to give it the power to do so at the next meeting later this month.
Airlines are allowed to fly overseas if they have an experience of five years, a minimum of 20 aircraft and a paid-up capital of Rs 100 crore.
Several inter-ministerial meetings in the recent past have discussed the possibility of relaxing the criterion to three years. This would have made Air Deccan eligible to fly abroad, but not Kingfisher Airlines which has a controlling stake in it.
The new rule will benefit Vijay Mallya’s Kingfisher Airlines, which has been asking for rights to fly abroad. Naresh Goyal-led Jet Airways has, however, been lobbying to retain the rule.
All applications will be cleared on a case-by-case basis.
02/09/07 Jayanta Roy Chowdhury/The Telegraph

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2007, General Aviation Sep 2007