Dubai: Indian flyers' wait for the Airbus A-380 may prove to be an endless one. While the government is now planning to allow foreign airlines to fly in the super jumbo here — three years after Delhi got the A-380 compliant terminal 3 — Emirates has said it will need more flying rights into India to do so. Since granting additional seats to Gulf carriers is a political hot potato, it remains unsure when the aircraft will finally be deployed for regular commercial flights.
"If I put a 519-seater (seating capacity of Emirates' A-380) into Delhi and they (Indian government) do not increase capacity (for us), then I need to cut frequency of existing flights. If (by deploying A-380) I can do one flight a day, then it does not make sense. If they allow us to grow capacity, seat count and put in the A-380 into Delhi and Mumbai, then we will do it very, very quickly," Emirates president Tim Clark told TOI, adding, "We have been planning to fly the A-380 from the day we got the first plane and that happened over five years back."
23/11/13 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
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"If I put a 519-seater (seating capacity of Emirates' A-380) into Delhi and they (Indian government) do not increase capacity (for us), then I need to cut frequency of existing flights. If (by deploying A-380) I can do one flight a day, then it does not make sense. If they allow us to grow capacity, seat count and put in the A-380 into Delhi and Mumbai, then we will do it very, very quickly," Emirates president Tim Clark told TOI, adding, "We have been planning to fly the A-380 from the day we got the first plane and that happened over five years back."
23/11/13 Saurabh Sinha/Times of India
