Buoyed by the rising demand for international travel, the government is planning to aggressively pursue open skies policy in the passenger segment over the next five years. So far, India's open sky policy is confined to cargo operations.
As a result of the initiative for open skies, foreign airlines from various countries would get to launch unlimited services to Indian cities, provided the countries concerned agree to reciprocal rights for designated Indian carriers.
As of now, India has a open skies agreement with the US and a partial open skies pact with the UK.International passenger air-traffic movement is expected to be liberalised in the medium-term and a policy declaration to this effect would be part of the Eleventh Five-Year Plan document, an official said.
"Bilateral air services agreement were liberalised in line with contemporary developments in international civil aviation sector. Open sky policy initiated in the passenger segment during the 10th five-year plan would be further pursued vigorously," a source in the Planning Commission said. "The move to pursue open-skies got approved of the full Planning Commission meeting chaired by the prime minister Manmohan Singh. It would soon be submitted to the national development council (NDC)," he added.
While India has already signed bilateral air-service agreement with the US on the principles of open-skies, it would soon have a similar pact with the European Union (EU), governing air services with almost 25 countries. The move would provide access to designated airlines from both sides to add significant number of destinations.
The agreement signed with the US provides more ports-of-call to the designated airlines of both the countries apart from flexibility of code-share rights. On the India-US route, annual traffic has increased from 447,000 in 2003-04 to 827,000 in 2006-07, an increase of 85% in just three years.
Total seat entitlements under bilateral agreements between India and all countries have increased 123% between Summer 2003 and Summer 2006 to reach 46.48 million seats per annum. The frequency entitlements, for example, between India and Europe (including the UK) has moved up from 70 flights per week to 204 flights during the same period.
India is also moving towards an open-sky agreement with the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries. The two private airlines Jet Airways and JetLite (formerly Air Sahara) apart from public sector Air India and erstwhile Indian (now merged with Air India), which meet the norm for flying on international routes, are operating daily flights on multiple routes in the neighbouring SAARC nations.
The government is also planning to do away with the norm of alloting foreign routes only to airlines with five years of domestic experience.
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