Edition 39
Last week, few news reports indicated the signing of MoU (Memorandum of Understanding) between India and Thailand for addition of seats in the Bilateral Air Services Agreement. The increase will be step wise with the total seats going up by 14,000 seats and four new airports being available to Indian carriers. The stepwise increase is in line with how the change was done with Saudi Arabia in the past.
As Indian and Thai carriers battle it out for the share of the market which is seeing higher traction due to visa free travel being announced by Thailand, neighbouring Malaysia is seeing its airlines add capacity to India but in this case the Indian carriers are not enjoying the share of the pie.
These instances show that there is willingness by the country to add seats and it’s not a blanket NO as has been the case with UAE or Qatar. That gets us to the real question, will Emirates get to add seats to India? At 50,000 seats a week, the India – Dubai rights are one of the highest and if one adds the whole of UAE to it, the numbers sound crazy. However, the same is not true with Qatar and while there are five daily flights which Emirates has to Mumbai, Qatar Airways has just one.
On the other side of the election, will the government relent and add seats to Dubai or Doha? The Indian side has also exhausted or nearly exhausted the rights, which makes it a equal footing but what is different is that the Indian carriers to Dubai and Doha largely cater to the Origin – Destination traffic while the foreign carriers have a very large portion of the traffic being carried beyond Dubai or Doha. This traffic is what the Indian carriers are aiming for and the government is trying to protect. However, the bilateral air services agreement goes much beyond pure aviation and often a geopolitical tool.
How will the mix work? In my opinion, the increase will come albeit marginally but when will it come? Let’s wait for the biggest festival of democracy to be over.
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