Emirates Airline celebrated the opening of the new terminal at the New Delhi airport last year by flying in an Airbus SAS A380.
The plane has not returned there since. India’s government has not acted on requests to change regulations that bar overseas carriers, including Emirates and Deutsche Lufthansa AG (LHA), from flying aircraft bigger than the Boeing Co. 747 into the country. That rules out the A380.
The two airlines are eager to tap India’s growing travel market with the A380, the world’s biggest passenger aircraft. They have run up against policies that protect state-owned Air India Ltd., according to Rishikesha Krishnan, a professor of corporate strategy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.
“All these measures are to shore up Air India and they completely distort the market,” said Krishnan, who writes papers about India’s aviation industry. “They are all misguided restrictive practices and not in the best interest of Indian aviation.”
The rules deny more choices for passengers and reduce competition for Air India, Krishnan said. The carrier merged with state-owned Indian Airlines in 2007 and has received 20 billion rupees ($449 million) of public funds since April 1, 2009.
Cost Advantage
Nasim Zaidi, secretary at the Ministry of Civil Aviation, declined to comment when asked if the government was delaying A380 approvals to help Air India. An Air India spokesman declined to comment, and Air India Chairman Arvind Jadhav did not respond to two calls to his mobile phone, calls to his office and e-mailed questions.
20/07/11 Karthikeyan Sundaram/Bloomberg.com
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