India has rejected United Arab Emirates offer to increase air traffic rights for Gulf carriers, India’s Civil Aviation Minister, Jyotiraditya Scindia said while speaking to Reuters.
The UAE has urged India to increase the maximum number of seats between the two countries by 50,000 per week.
Scindia further said that he wants Indian carriers to order more wide-body planes and offer non-stop flights to international destinations, adding India was mobilising to handle the transportation needs of its population of 1.3 billion.
Responding to this stance of Indian Government, Tim Clark, Head, Emirates said that Indian airlines missing out on revenues to the tune of $800-900 million due to limited bilateral agreements between India and Dubai
“You can’t expect to grow and not allow others to come in. You’ve got to have an open skies agreement with most. It is such a big market. It is not as if the cake is static. The cake is growing,” Clark said at a recent media event.
India and Dubai permit 66,000 seats per week between the two to be operated by the airlines of the two countries. Dubai wants that to be enhanced because Emirates and FlyDubai have together reached that limit.
The debate of increasing airline seats between India and Dubai has been going on for the last five years as a large number of Indian travelers use carriers such as Emirates to transit to Europe and the US.
The Indian government wants to recapture traffic lost to foreign carriers and is pushing airlines to order more widebody planes to meet demand
"The minute you give direct connectivity to international locations directly from Delhi, any passenger is going to prefer a direct connect, rather than going through another country's hub," Scindia added.
The Indian government increased the flying rights between India and UAE in 2013 by raising it four times from 13,330 seats to 50,000 seats per week. Hence the carriers have been pushing for a rise in flying capacity between India and West Asia or the Middle East.
However, Indian carriers fly directly to Europe and the US and are not keen on expanding flying capacity to West Asia, as more flights to transit hubs in the middle east may hit the passenger load factor of their direct flights.