Airline await India approval to fly in A380
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Foreign airlines are still waiting for approval from India to fly its A380, Bloomberg reported.The government has not acted on requests to change regulations that bar overseas carriers from flying aircraft bigger than the Boeing 747 into the country, which rules out the A380.Emirates, together with Lufthansa, are eager to tap India’s growing travel market with the A380, the world’s biggest passenger aircraft. They have run up against policies that protect state-owned Air India Ltd., according to Rishikesha Krishnan, a professor of corporate strategy at the Indian Institute of Management in Bangalore.”All these measures are to shore up Air India and they completely distort the market,” Krishnan was quoted saying.Nasim Zaidi, secretary at the Ministry of Civil Aviation, had declined to comment when asked if the government was delaying A380 approvals to help Air India. An Air India spokesman had also declined to comment, and Air India Chairman Arvind Jadhav did not respond to queries from Bloomberg.The A380 offers a “significant cost advantage to airlines, allowing them to price tickets cheaper,” Amber Dubey, a Gurgaon, India-based director at auditing and consulting company KPMG, was quoted saying.Lufthansa, which flies to seven destinations in India with 52 weekly flights, is ready to operate the A380 to New Delhi as soon as India allows the service, the airline was reported saying to Bloomberg.
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