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Jet allowed to fly to Gulf

NEW DELHI: The Union Government on Friday announced its approval for opening up the lucrative Gulf route to private carrier Jet Airways, promoted by Naresh Goyal. Jet Airways will get the traffic rights on the busy money spinner India-Gulf/Middle East routes from January 1, 2008.

Till now, only public sector carriers — Air India and Indian Airlines, now merged into single entity Air India — were allowed to operate on the Middle East and Gulf route.

As per the decision of the Government, scheduled Indian private airlines were not permitted to operate international flights to and from Gulf till the end of 2007.

The Gulf routes were served only by the Indian public carriers till then, an official statement said. Jet Airways was granted traffic rights on the Gulf and Middle East routes at a meeting of the Directorate General of Civil Aviation on Thursday, it said. Jet has been permitted to carry 3,682 passengers to Kuwait a week from three destinations in India. Of this, 1,582 passengers would be from the Delhi-Kuwait route while an equal number of 1,050 passengers on Trivandrum-Kuwait and Kochi-Kuwait routes, the statement said.

Besides, Jet can fly 3,150 passengers to Oman a week on three routes Kochi-Muscat, Trivandrum-Muscat and Kozhikode-Muscat.

The airliner has been given permission to connect Kozhikode and Mumbai to Qatar’s capital city Doha, where it can carry a maximum of 2,100 passengers a week. Jet Airways has been offered 2,100 seats to Bahrain, of which 1,050 are in the Mumbai-Bahrain route and another 1,050 in the Kochi-Bahrain route.

Jet Airways had applied for traffic rights to the Gulf and Middle East routes on July 18 this year, asking for rights on routes to Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai and Abu Dhabi.

The total entitlement for Indian carriers on the Gulf routes at present is 85,481seats per week of which 21950 are for Dubai, 7420 for Abu Dhabi, 10206 for Sharjah, 8000 for Kuwait, 10892 for Qatar, 7546 for Oman, 10967 for Bahrain and 8500 for Saudi Arabia.

The government decision is likely to move other private carriers like Air Deccan-Kingfisher combine and SpiceJet to lobby for opening international routes for them as well though according to the present policy and norms the domestic carriers should have completed five years of operations and have a fleet of at least 20 aircraft.

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