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| Edited By: Sindhu Bhattacharya |Source: DNA |Updated: Mar 17, 2018, 05:15 AM IST
The ministry of civil aviation believes in protecting the turf of Air India and other domestic carriers.
No wonder then that it has agreed to release just about 1,500 additional seat entitlements per week to Malaysian carriers against a demand of about 20,000 additional seats during the recently held bilateral seat entitlement talks.
Sources point out that the Malaysian government was seeking to almost double the present seat entitlement for its carriers but its low-cost airline, Air Asia, would benefit the most from this.
The airline would increase frequencies to existing cities and get a toehold in more Indian cities if more seat entitlements were given, hurting the prospects of Indian carriers such as Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher which run services to Kuala Lumpur, they said.
At present, the Air Services Agreement (ASA) between India and Malaysia allows airlines from each country to offer up to 20,000 seats per week either way. In case Malaysia’s demands had been met, almost 40,000 seats would have been on offer every week to between the two countries.
Our airlines are not using even 4,000 seats per week......why should we enable Air Asia to increase flights into India and further eat into the market share of Indian carriers on this sector? Besides, the Malaysian Government is hesitant in even renewing the ASA. We have made it clear that only 1,500-1,600 additional seats would be allowed and that too when another ASA is signed,” sources said.
They said of the 20,000 additional seats sought, 12,000 per week were for Air Asia alone since the carrier wants to increase capacity on the Kolkata-Kuala Lumpur leg.
Air Asia already flies to New Delhi, Mumbai and seven other cities and operates 120 weekly flights to India. Malaysian Airlines is also offering services between Indian cities and KL.
The sources also spoke of problems having cropped up in the proposed daily services of Air India to Melbourne. “The Australian government wants sky marshals to accompany each of their Commonwealth Team carrying flights.... why should we accommodate these requests from a country where Indians are under attack? We have referred the matter to the Home Ministry”.
As per Air India’s winter schedule, the airline was to start daily connections to Melbourne, becoming the first carrier from India to offer direct flights to anywhere in Australia.
