Asian airlines hail open sky

The airline industry has welcomed Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's proposal to establish an open sky policy with the ASEAN member countries, as part of the free trade agreement.

The designated airlines of the ASEAN countries would be allowed to operate daily flights from the four Indian metros and also from some non-metro destinations.

"We welcome this move and would like to take optimum advantage of the proposal. We, in fact, have been wanting to increase the capacity out of India for some time now," senior Thai Airways executives said.

Thai Airways would like to have daily flights out of Mumbai. At present it operates thrice a week from Mumbai.

"Post-SARS, the growth in passenger traffic to these countries has gone up by 15 per cent. Capacity addition, therefore, would be more than welcome on this sector," Ankur Bhatia, managing director (Indian subcontinent) Amadeus -- a global travel solutions provider -- said.

Welcoming the move, Travel Agents Association of India vice president Balbir Mayal said India should also fly more frequently to these countries. India as of now has not included the reciprocal rights clause in the offer.

Malaysia Airlines said it would like to use the offer to operate daily flights out of Delhi and Mumbai. Currently, the airline operates four flights a week from Delhi and Mumbai, seven from Chennai, two from Bangalore and one from Hyderabad.

Airline executives said traffic from India had been growing by 20-25 per cent yearly.

India, as of now, does not have air connections with seven of the ten ASEAN countries, which are Laos, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Brunei. India has air links with Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia.