State-run Air India seems to be finally getting its preferential rights in allocation of traffic rights over foreign routes after losing it to private carriers in the previous UPA government.
The government has decided to allot it about 5,700 weeklyseats out of grounded Jet Airways’ unused quota on the lucrative India-Dubairoute.
The public sector airline has also been promised over 5,000seats on India-Qatar route besides about 4,600 additional seats to and fromLondon following the re-allocation of grounded Jet’s unused internationaltraffic rights.
A Civil Aviation Ministry told IANS that Air India will getpreference in allocation of bilateral seat entitlements.
“The allocation would be for the ongoing summerschedule and considered temporary given that efforts are on to revive JetAirways,” said a reliable source.
Amid faint possibility of grounded Jet Airway’s revivalanytime soon, the ministry had on May 3 held a meeting with local carriers todiscuss re-allocation of the airline’s foreign traffic rights.
Private carriers SpiceJet, IndiGo, GoAir, Vistara and AirIndia had pitched for bigger share of the pie in the last meeting. While IndiGoco-founder Rahul Bhatia had suggested for allocating foreign traffic rights inproportion to various airlines’ fleet capacity, Vistara argued that smallerairlines be given bigger share.Jet Airways had last month withdrawn operationsdue to severe fund crunch and remain grounded in absence of a viable revivalplan.