5-yr, 20 aircraft rules hitting Indian carriers

Foreign airlines, especially from the Gulf and Southeast Asia, have now deployed single aisle planes to fly out of a large number of Indian cities. Air Arabia, for instance, flies from 13 Indian cities to Sharjah. These passengers reach hubs like Dubai, Doha, Qatar, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore in time to fill up the wide-bodies of home airlines that go to all parts of the globe, including far away Rio and Buenos Aires.

So profitable is the Indian market for foreign airlines that Gulf airlines applied for permission to fly into five cities, including three metros, even before starting operation!

���Some foreign new airlines��� first flight is into India while we have the five-year, 20-aircraft restriction. In a free market, this rule is illogical and hurts our own companies,��� says Paramount Airways MD M Thiagarajan. The founder of low cost flying in India, Captain G Gopinath, said rules should be such that they allow entrepreneurs to come in and break the old order. ���Putting restriction like these will mean established players will continue to enjoy their monopoly and stagnate growth. Newcomers with ideas and innovations must be given a chance,��� Gopinath said.

The aviation ministry in UPA-I had proposed to change the rule and allow airline to fly abroad on a ���case-to-case��� basis. The matter was then referred to a group of ministers. But then attention strayed from this as Air India���s battle for survival came on the sarkari front-burner. The ministry is getting flak as AI���s poor health is being partially attributed to the huge grant of bilateral under which foreign airlines have flooded India.

The Indian aviation industry is obviously worried.