International aviation is a controlled business as each sovereign country has full rights over allocation of routes over its territory to airlines of other countries. This is done through bilateral air service agreements between countries.
In India the strong influence of Air India over the ministry of civil aviation led to a conservative policy towards such agreements in spite of repeated requests of ministries of commerce and external affairs to be more liberal. Did this lead to an overall economic loss to the country as business people could not get tickets when needed? No such calculation has been made but the answer is likely to be in the affirmative.
In the past it was always Air India’s inability to meet the requests of foreign airlines for more capacity in matching the flights performed by them into and out of India that discouraged the government from giving more international routes into India.
08/01/13 Sanat Kaul/Deccan Herald
