India’s long-awaited new civil aviation policy needs to address key issues on infrastructure and high taxation, according to Tony Tyler, director general and CEO of the International Air Transport Association (IATA). Speaking at the annual India Aviation Day in New Delhi on March 26, he urged the country’s government to produce a coordinated policy framework for aviation that all relevant departments, including the ministries for finance, economy, development, rural infrastructure and tourism, can pursue. Tyler made the point that an uncoordinated approach across government undermines what little aviation policy India now observes.
“Sadly, the [Indian] finance minister did not include aviation infrastructure, a catalyst to growth, [in the recent Indian budget],” he complained. India’s promises, first made in 2008, to upgrade its immigration service to a modern advance passenger information (API) system used in other major countries still have not been honored, lamented Tyler. “India is unfortunately well known across the industry for the non-standard API that it requires airlines to transmit–and in a non-standard format I should add,” he said. The IATA leader also decried what he called “policy disarray in ground handling” in India that denies airlines other than state-owned Air India the right to perform ground operations for themselves.
01/04/13 Neelam Mathews/AINonline
