Pakistan says no to Jet, Sahara

Pakistan has declined an Indian proposal for allowing private airlines, Jet Airways and Air Sahara to fly to that country.

Instead Islamabad has expressed preference to consolidate the air services now being operated by the national carriers of the two countries, Indian Airlines and Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), according to civil aviation sources.

Earlier, Jet and Sahara had approached the government for facilitating their flights to the western neighbour and the request was sent by the external affairs ministry to Islamabad a few months ago.

The Pakistani civil aviation authorities grounded the proposal on the plea that the two countries should first consolidate their existing services and later discuss the issue of according 'designated carrier' status to the private airlines, sources said.

It was felt that the Pakistani decision may have been prompted by fears of Indian carriers walking away with majority of the traffic between the two countries at the cost of its national carrier PIA.

The civil aviation ministry had approached its Pakistani counterpart after the Cabinet of the erstwhile NDA government had accorded sanctions to private airlines for flying to Saarc countries.

The two private airlines have started flights to Colombo and Kathmandu and were planning to start their services from Kolkata to Dhaka.Jet had evinced interest to fly to Pakistan's port city of Karachi from Mumbai keeping in view the traffic between the two cities.

Pakistan had even shelved a proposal of the air sahara during the historic indo-pak cricket series to start regular operations to that country.

This decision at that time diluted the interest of jet airways, which was planning to start chartered flights to ferry cricket enthusiasts. So far, indian airlines is the only carrier which has a service between delhi and lahore while pakistan international airways (pia) flies to delhi and mumbai.

Grounded

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• Pakistani authorities grounded the proposal on the plea that the two countries should first consolidate their existing services
• The Pakistani decision may have been prompted by fears of Indian carriers walking away with majority of the traffic