Dubai asks for extra seats on India air routes

The largest destination for Indian transit and point-to-point travelers – has applied for flight rights for an additional 50,000 weekly seats to and from India. 
   It has also applied for permission for its airlines to fly direct to additional destinations – Amritsar, Tiruchirapalli, Coimbatore, Kannur, Goa, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati and Pune – these are very lucrative sources of income for this sector. As of 2014, bilateral flights between India and Dubai have seated 65,200 per week, used by designated airlines from both sides.
   The Modi government has not been generous in expanding foreign countries’ existing flight rights, which can be used by both their airlines and Indian ones, in order to increase Indian airlines’ share of the country’s booming international travel. 
   Several countries, including the UAE (while Dubai is part of the UAE, it is considered separately for flight rights) have sought increased bilateral ties with India in recent years.

The reason: While their designated airlines will quickly build the additional capacity, India wants a calibrated increase where its airlines are able to take advantage of it by being able to deploy more flights. 
Dubai’s mega-airline Emirates and its low-cost division flyDubai have the fleet and financial muscle to increase capacity as quickly as possible. Indian airlines, on the other hand, may gradually catch up depending on factors such as existing ones increasing their fleet size and new ones like Akasa, which are eligible to fly abroad once they have 20 planes in the fleet.
With the increase in post-Covid travel, Dubai Civil Aviation Authority DG Mohammed A Ahli has written to Aviation Minister Jyotiraditya Scindia saying: “…the aviation sector between Dubai and India remains the cornerstone of all these ventures as well as bringing people together and sharing ideas between our two nations…agreement between our two states, the respective designated privileges Updating airlines is critical.”
-B