The Hindu Business Line : Centre not to allow States to float airlines for international routes

THE Central Government is not keen on allowing State Governments to float their own airlines for operations on international routes. The Centre's latest thinking could put a spoke in the proposed plans of the Kerala government to float an airline to operate flights to the Gulf region.

Official sources told Business Line that the Central Government would not change the existing rules to allow Kerala or any other State Government to float an airline purely for operating international flights. The current rules allow only those airlines that have completed at least five years of domestic operations and have a fleet of 20 aircraft to operate international flights.

The Kerala Government recently sent a proposal to the Centre seeking relaxation in rules and allow it to start an airline that could operate between the State and the Gulf region. The State has been keen to start the airline, as passengers travelling from there to the Gulf have been facing problems.

Central Government officials point out that acceding to the request of the Kerala Government at the moment will go against the decision of the Union Cabinet, which has barred even the two private sector airlines - Jet Airways and Air Sahara - from operating to the Gulf region for three years. This, the officials said, was a conscious decision of the Government to protect Air India and Indian Airlines.

To ensure that international air travellers do not face any problems, the Government has followed a liberal air services bilateral regime that has seen a huge increase in the air seats allotted to airlines of various countries including the Gulf region.

In the past few months, a host of international airlines have increased operations to and from India. These include British Airways that has not only started operating two flights a day from Mumbai to London but has also increased the frequency of flights to Chennai and Bangalore.

Similarly, the German airline Lufthansa has added flights from Delhi while Air France has started operating a flight from Bangalore to Paris.

The expansion in air connectivity has not been to the metro cities alone. Late last month, Air Arabia started a regular flight from Sharjah to Nagpur while Singapore Airline connected Ahmedabad to Singapore recently.

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