Private airlines are opposing a civil aviation ministry directive to deploy a small percentage of their capacity to the Lakshadweep islands. In their defence, they say the local airport, Agatti, has limited capacity to handle aircraft.
Currently, only government-owned Air India’s subsidiary, Alliance Air, and one private airline, Kingfisher, fly to Lakshadweep, from Kochi and Bangalore, respectively. The new rule, issued last month, means other airlines would also have to introduce flights.
Air traffic route guidelines are being reviewed and a new connectivity policy is expected to be finalised in a month. However, the ministry had separately issued a circular to all airlines to begin flights to Lakshadweep.
According to present guidelines, traffic is divided into four categories. Category I comprises metro routes such as Mumbai-Delhi, Mumbai-Bangalore, etc, where airlines can deploy up to half of their available seat-kilometres (ASKM); in simple terms, available capacity. Category II covers Jammu & Kashmir, the Andaman & Nicobar Islands, the northeast states and Lakshadweep.
Airlines need to deploy up to 10 per cent of the capacity used on Category-I routes on these sectors. Then there is Category IIA, which covers routes within the northeast and Jammu & Kashmir; 10 per cent of the Category-II routes must be deployed here. Category III covers the rest of India.
While the airlines had the choice of selecting destinations within the category II routes, this time the government has asked them to deploy 0.2 per cent of ASKMs to Lakshadweep. This has stumped carriers, as the airport at Agatti island in Lakshadweep has a small runway which can accommodate only turbo prop planes. Only Alliance Air, Jet Airways and Kingfisher operate such aircraft. SpiceJet has placed an order for Bombardier Q400 turboprop planes to connect cities in southern India. Two other low-cost airlines, GoAir and IndiGo, operate only Airbus A320s.
“Airlines are allowed to trade ASKMs with other carriers if they are unable to service the category II routes. However, available capacity on the Lakshadweep route is less since the ATR (the turbo prop normally used) has a maximum of 72 seats and no surplus is available for sharing,” an airline executive said.
“There is not much demand for airlines to increase flights and since the runway is smaller in length, it can’t accommodate a Boeing 737 or Airbus A320. The airlines have asked the government to review the circular.”
An executive from another private airline explained, “We can’t introduce flights to Lakshadweep in the winter schedule this year and have asked the government to defer implementation.”
Explaining their decision, a ministry official replied: Lakshadweep is the least connected part of India and that is why the government had issued the circular. It specifies 0.2 per cent of ASKM should be deployed to Lakshadweep. This is a miniscule figure. This circular will be in place till the connectivity policy is finalised and will be subsumed in it.”
Asked how airlines could be asked to fly when they had no aircraft suitable to land there, he said: “If the airlines have obtained a permit to fly, they should follow the government rules. We have given the airlines time till this winter to implement it and are willing to discuss if the airlines have any problem.” The government could not, he said, extend the Agatti runway because of proximity to the sea.
