Private airlines can fly to Saarc nations

Private domestic airlines can spread their wings further. The Cabinet today approved operations by private airlines to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) countries.

It also formally approved the Association of South East Asian Nations (Asean) and the Sri Lankan open sky offers made by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

The Cabinet approved a more liberal and transparent bilateral policy, allowing all foreign airlines to operate daily flights to two international airports in India.

It also directed the ministry of civil aviation to present the civil aviation policy by the first week of January, official sources said.

Officials said the open sky offers would be reciprocal and be operational as soon as the respective countries made their offers. So far as international flight rights were concerned, the officials said the unutilised rights of Indian Airlines and Air-India would be given to Jet and Sahara.

Reacting to the Cabinet decision, U K Bose, chief executive officer, Air Sahara, said, "We have been lobbying for this for a long time and are keen to start flights to Nepal and Bangladesh as soon as we are formally notified." The airline plans to augment its fleet to serve the extra international sectors.

As a part of the Asean open sky offer, special rights to operate intermediate flights have been extended to Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Fifth freedom rights have been given to Sri Lankan Airlines, allowing it to fly from any destination in India to the Saarc countries.

The Asean open sky offer allows the designated airlines of Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Brunei, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia to operate daily flights out of the four metros and any number of flights from 18 non-metro destinations. The same rights have been extended to Sri Lanka along with the fifth freedom right.