Asian Governments Should Lift Airline Restrictions

Asian governments need to move faster to lift air restrictions to spur competition for carriers such as Malaysian Airline System Bhd. and Garuda Indonesia, an industry body said.
Full liberalization or ``open skies'' may be achieved in eight years, as some governments start to free some air routes, Giovanni Bisignani, director general of the International Air Transport Association, or IATA, said in a Bloomberg Television interview yesterday.
Governments in Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines restrict landing rights, shielding national carriers from competition. Greater access will push fares lower, spur air traffic and may encourage mergers, Bisignani said.
``I would like to see the bilateral system in a museum,'' Bisignani said in Singapore. ``We cannot sell our product where the market is and we cannot merge and consolidate. It's not easy to consolidate because of ownership issues.''
A fully liberalized Asian air-travel market could generate as many as 1,600 low-cost routes by 2015, according to Airbus SAS. Asia's budget airlines will have a combined fleet of 1,300 single-aisle aircraft by 2025, compared with 236 now, according to Airbus, the world's largest maker of commercial aircraft.
18/02/08 Chan Sue Ling and Haslinda Amin/Bloomberg

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Categories: Foreign Feb 2008, Indian Aviation- In General Feb 2008