According to the plans submitted to the Civil Aviation Ministry, Jet Airways is understood to have sought to connect to 23 cities with Abu Dhabi in the long and medium terms, requiring over 41,000 seats per week over the next three years.
The current bilateral agreement with Abu Dhabi allows Indian carriers to operate merely 13,300 seats each week.
Given the growing needs, Jet Airways suggested that the existing capacity entitlements of Indian carriers under the bilateral agreement be expanded by over 40,000 seats and urged the government to expand the India-Abu Dhabi bi-laterals by almost 54,000 seats each week as per a PTI report.
Jet’s plans, if implemented, would finally lead a passenger from cities like Ahmedabad, Lucknow, Chandigarh or Coimbatore to directly fly to the Abu Dhabi gateway instead of metros like Delhi or Mumbai, and changeover for flights to other destinations beyond Gulf.
Apart from neighbouring Gulf nations, the destinations beyond Abu Dhabi would include Cairo, Beirut, Nairobi, Addis Ababa, Najaf and Baghdad (Iraq) and cities in Iran, along with North America and Europe. These operations are akin to the one Jet is already operating through Brussels.
PTI sources said that the plan was in conjunction with the Civil Aviation Ministry’s efforts to open up air services in Tier-II and Tier-III cities to cater to the largely untapped traffic.
However, as per a report in ET, key ministries - notably finance - are opposed to the civil aviation ministry's proposal to increase bilateral flying rights between India and Abu Dhabi.
According to government sources of ET, at a meeting of an inter-ministerial group (IMG) on Thursday, the finance ministry opposed increasing flying rights between India and Abu Dhabi, arguing it would take away Indian air traffic, not only harming airports but also airlines, especially national carrier Air India.
"The Department of Economic Affairs said at the IMG meeting that on the one hand the government was pumping 30,000 crore into Air India to bail it out, on the other hand how could it allow someone else to come in and take away its traffic," a government source said.
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