Indian Airlines' domestic route structure is to be revamped to ensure that a sufficient number of aircraft is available for the proposed evacuation of Indians from West Asia.
This is part of a contingency plan the civil aviation ministry is working on.
This means that some of IA's low-traffic domestic routes may be discontinued for the time being or their frequency reduced. Also, the capacity deployed on some Indian routes is being re-evaluated and will soon be restructured to make bigger aircraft available for the evacuation exercise.
The evacuation process, which had till now been orchestrated from Kuwait, will now be conducted from Daman.
"The plan will, however, be put in operation if the situation worsens and there is a need to step up evacuation. At the moment, the ministry is adopting a wait and watch policy and a final decision on this is yet to be taken," aviation industry sources said.
IA's services to the Northeast and some of the smaller cities in western and central India, where passenger traffic is low, are being re-examined. These routes are commercially unviable and can be easily discontinued without major disruption in the existing route structure.
In the route restructuring process, the ministry will also bear in mind the operations of the private domestic airlines, Jet Airways and Sahara Airlines, so that connectivity is not affected.
According to sources close to the aviation ministry, Indians who are to be evacuated from West Asia will be offered discounted fares by the two national carriers and the government will bear the difference.
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