GoAir (Mumbai International) has once more, set out plans for its much anticipated international debut, now due to take place during the final quarter of this year.
According to the PTI news agency, India's Civil Aviation secretary R N Choubey told reporters last week that GoAir had applied for, and been granted, permission to start flights from the new Kannur International Airport, set to open on October 1, to Dammam, Saudi Arabia.
Founded in 2005, GoAir currently operates a fleet of nineteen A320-200s and eighteen A320neo on flights spanning 23 towns and cities across India. In preparation for its inaugural flights abroad, the Indian Ministry of Civil Aviation (MOCA) has already endorsed the LCC's Air Operator's Certificate (AOC) for international operations.
Until now, only five Indian carriers have been authorized for international flight operations namely Air India, Air India Express, IndiGo Airlines, Jet Airways, and SpiceJet.
Vistara is also in the process of putting together plans for its own foreign services but may have to modify them given a lack of space for an additional Indian carrier on the routes it wants to serve. In July, The Economic Times reported the Singapore Airlines/Tata Group joint-venture airline had applied to MOCA for international traffic rights to serve multiple South East Asian and Indian Subcontinent destinations.
The report said that in its initial phase, Vistara had sought to run flights from its Delhi International hub to destinations in Sri Lanka, the Maldives, and Thailand as well as from Kolkata to Thailand before October of this year. Thereafter, during the Winter 2018/19 season, it had planned to connect Delhi with destinations in Bangladesh, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia and Pune with Singapore Changi.
However, an official told the newspaper that to accommodate Vistara's request, the MOCA would have to scrutinize which other Indian carriers were using their allocated route authorities and which were not.
“Barring Sri Lanka, where we have Open Skies, there is no quota available for any other route that Vistara wants to fly to. Also, there are no plans in the offing to start negotiations for an increase with these countries,” a MOCA official told The Economic Times. “We may ask the unutilised bilateral back but the airline may not return it and say that they have plans to launch flights soon."
Under new regulations, the Indian Government does not renegotiate bilateral entitlements with any country unless Indian airlines use 80% of their allocated quota of existing flying rights.
