The civil aviation ministry has engaged two agencies ? International Air Transport Association (IATA) and Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation (CAPA) ? to study the impact of government’s move to open domestic skies to foreign airlines starting 2004, ministry sources said.
Following the liberalisation of skies, foreign carriers such as Emirates, Singapore Airlines and Lufthansa have gained enhanced access to various cities in the country.
As per government data for the year ending March 2009, foreign carriers operated 320,052 seats per week to and from various Indian cities as against 162,670 seats by Indian airlines.
There are divergent views on the government’s aggressive policy that allowed the designated foreign carriers to operate more seats on reciprocal basis.
While a section of the industry argues that the government would have moved in the direction slowly given the Indian carriers’ size and ability to expand the other view is that access to foreign carriers have benefitted the travelers by ensuring enough competition among carriers.
“While from market perspective one may argue that the policy helped lower the tariff for air-travellers we do see many countries giving preferential treatment to their flag carriers and other domestic airlines,” Amber Dubey, KPMG director (defence and aerospace), said. Indian carriers’ share in the country’s international air traffic has come down to about 25% from 35% a few years back.
The newly-commissioned study by the ministry is expected to provide a framework for signing new bilateral air service agreements besides further broadening the scope of existing traffic rights. It will focus on the economic impact of the last four to five years’ bilateral air-agreements.
“The study will not be country-specific. It will be the overall policy keeping in view what happened in the last few years. The report will also help the government take future course of action,” an official said.
Several foreign carriers take feed from India for their long-haul flights to the US, Canada and the Latin American countries.
Industry watchers say that airlines like Lufthansa, British Airways and Emirates fly one third of the passengers booked in India to their trans-Atlantic destinations via domestic hubs in Frankfurt, London and Dubai respectively.
Indian carriers are, however, yet to catch up with their foreign counterparts.
While Jet Airways has just started taking feed for their long-haul flights from Dhaka and Sri Lanka, governement-owned Air India is in the process of doing so using the Delhi airport as their hub.
