| According to information made available by various airlines, the total number of seats international seats to India has gone to 1,46,848 in from 142,391 six months ago. |
| "We have seen airlines adding sizeable capacities on the India route. The main reason for this is the potential this market holds because of the rise in travel and tourism. We expect the trend to continue," said Kapil Kaul, senior vice president, Centre for Asia Pacific Aviation. |
| About 60 per cent of the new capacity that has come up in the last six months has been added by domestic carriers Jet Airways and Air Sahara, which have started daily services to destinations in the SAARC region. Both the airlines operate daily flights to Colombo and Kathmandu, though Air Sahara's inaugural flight to the Himalayan kingdom was called off because of the Maoist trouble there. |
| The big addition to capacity in the next few months will come from the Limited Open Sky Policy which will allow airlines to increase as many flights as they want on the India route during the peak season. |
| The government expects the policy to result in at least 1000 seats to be added during this time by various airlines. |
| Some airlines have already decided to up their numbers. Sri Lankan Airlines is adding additional 11 flights to India from October 31, 2004, taking the total number of its flights to 77 a week. |
| Nine of its ten Indian destinations will have daily or more frequent flights. It already operates 15 flights per week from Chennai and 11 from Trivandrum. |
| "Our target is to provide a web of services around India, which will allow rapid connections to both Indians and foreign visitors to many parts of the country. India is also the largest tourism market for Sri Lanka with traffic increasing 29.5 per cent to 90,603 in 2003," said a Sri Lankan Airlines executive. |
| Lufthansa, which currently operates 29 flights from India, may add a couple of additional flights from Bangalore. |
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