Centre back to drawing board on international operations of domestic carriers

strong>New Delhi: Government is back to the drawing board on the issue of easing norms for international operations by domestic airlines, with the civil aviation ministry deciding to put the proposed norms in public domain for consultations.[caption id=“attachment_2197000” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Representational image. Reuters[/caption] The government would also convene a meeting of chief executives of airlines to elicit their views on the draft aviation policy before putting it in place, aviation secretary Rajiv Nayan Choubey told reporters today. The proposed norms would be put in public domain for consultation by the month end, he said. He added that the civil aviation ministry would also invite comments from the airlines on the scrapping of 5/20 rule, a proposal which is being opposed by the airlines umbrella organisation Federation of India Airlines (FIA). FIA comprises Jet Airways, SpiceJet, IndiGo and GoAir. Terming the erstwhile UPA’s aviation policy as “opaque,” the government had brought out a fresh draft last November, recommending listing of state-run Airports Authority of India (AAI) and chopper firm Pawan Hans on stock exchanges and steps to beef up Air India operations, hinting at its stake sale too. Alongside, it has also put in process tweaking of 5/20 norms to provide a level-playing field. The existing rules allow a domestic airline to fly abroad only if it has completed five years of domestic operations and a fleet of 20 aircraft. Since then the government is going back and forth on both the issues. It had earlier planned to implement the proposed new aviation policy from January this year but had to defer it as it could not evolve a consensus among the stakeholders on the issue. The ministry has proposed a complicated formula for replacing 5/20, in which domestic flying credits would still be needed for new airlines to fly abroad. As per the proposed norms, a new airline would be eligible to apply for international operations once it has operated on domestic routes and deployed capacity equivalent to at least 200 domestic flying credits (DFCs). The proposed rules stipulate that a new start-up domestic airline will only be allowed to operate on those international routes to begin with, which are more than six hours of flight from India. On reaching the 300 DFC (domestic flying credits) milestone, the airline can approach the government for being designated on a long-haul international route of more than six-hour flying time. Such deployment would be required to comply with the revised Route Dispersal Guidelines. At present, budget airline GoAir, which had started operations in November 2005, is the only domestic carrier among the old players, which is not eligible for overseas operations as it does not have 20 planes. New airlines Vistara and AirAsia India are also not eligible for operating international flights from India as they do not meet the 5/20 guidelines and are pitching for the abolition of such rules. By bringing in changes in the more than decade-old rule, the government seeks to address the imbalance between domestic and foreign carriers. PTI