Ministry grounds private carriers’ foreign dreams

While the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has raised concern over the extant government policy helping foreign airlines capture higher market share on lucrative sectors to and from India, the civil aviation ministry seems to be content with the status quo.
The ministry has been holding local private carriers Jet Airways, IndiGo, SpiceJet and Kingfisher Airlines from operating around 50,000 seats on international routes. The ministry's policy, at the behest of state-owned Air India, has resulted in lower utilisation of traffic entitlements by the local carriers on routes like India-Dubai. On the India-Gulf sectors alone, the private carriers’ plan to operate over 21,000 seats a week is awaiting the ministry’s approval since early this year.
Bigger foreign carriers like Emirates have made most of the delay in regulatory clearance to their Indian counterparts. On India-Dubai sector, designated carriers of Dubai are utilising 98% of the available traffic rights as against 46% by Indian carriers.
The Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation India head Kapil Kaul said the government’s policy to delay the private carriers’ plan to operate additional services on foreign routes could force the airlines to deploy capacity on domestic routes.
27/09/11 Financial Express

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Categories: Foreign Sep 2011, Indian Aviation- In General Sep 2011