Mumbai: Private airlines are opposing a civil aviation ministry directive to deploy a small percentage of their capacity to the Lakshadweep islands. In their defence, they say the local airport, Agatti, has limited capacity to handle aircraft.
Currently, only government-owned Air India’s subsidiary, Alliance Air, and one private airline, Kingfisher, fly to Lakshadweep, from Kochi and Bangalore, respectively. The new rule, issued last month, means other airlines would also have to introduce flights.
Air traffic route guidelines are being reviewed and a new connectivity policy is expected to be finalised in a month. However, the ministry had separately issued a circular to all airlines to begin flights to Lakshadweep.
According to present guidelines, traffic is divided into four categories. Category I comprises metro routes such as Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Bangalore, etc, where airlines can deploy up to half of their available seat-kilometres (ASKM); in simple terms, available capacity. Category II covers Jammu & Kashmir, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the northeast states and Lakshadweep.
Airlines need to deploy up to 10 per cent of the capacity used on Category-I routes on these sectors. Then there is Category IIA, which covers routes within the northeast and Jammu & Kashmir; 10 per cent of the Category-II routes must be deployed here. Category III covers the rest of India.
05/08/11 Aneesh Phadnis/Business Standard
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