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| Who flies abroad? It’s Jet vs rest in battle for skies | | | Monday , Aug 13,
New Delhi: India’s aviation sector is locked in an intense battle for the skies. The dogfight, this time around, is over flying international.
Sources said that domestic airlines, lobbying hard to be allowed to fly out of India, have come together to fight efforts by Jet Airways chief Naresh Goyal to stop newer entrants from operating on international sectors.
The Group of Ministers, which meets on Tuesday, is expected to discuss lowering norms for airlines that want to go international.
Currently, the new entrants need to have a five-year flying record and 20 aircraft. The only two private airlines that meet these norms are Jet Airways and Jetlite, both owned by Naresh Goyal.
Sources said that Goyal is lobbying to introduce a profitability criterion, which will effectively keep out the newer airlines out of picture.
But analysts say that shouldn't be the case.
“It should be a qualification in terms of capital, a well-structured business case, making the majority ownership is Indian and that there is no foreign ownership. As long as those fundamentals are in place there is no economic or political rationale stopping Indian carriers from flying abroad,” says Kapil Kaul of Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation.
The five-year flying norm was introduced by the Government citing security fears. But domestic carriers argue that airlines like Etihad and al-Jazeera, which are less than two years old, are allowed to fly into India and that the same norms should be applied to outbound flights.
Today, 80 per cent of this traffic is controlled by international airlines and the other 20 per cent by Air India, Indian and Jet Airways.
Domestic airlines are also eyeing the extremely profitable Gulf route, open only to national carriers till the end of the year.
At a time when the Government has an open sky policy in place, letting domestic airlines fly international would help control the overcrowding in domestic skies.
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