Agoracom

NEW DELHI: The massive reduction in domestic flights in past few months is now triggering serious regulatory issues now. Some airlines have cancel

led flights — hence freeing up precious slots at choked airports like Mumbai — without informing the government. As a result, other airlines who would have been willing to introduce flights on those freed up slots have not been able to do so.

Things have reached such a state that the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) has started issuing notices to airlines for the failure to inform about flight withdrawals. "We have issued a show cause notice to an airline as it cancelled large number of flights without informing us. These slots could have been used by others. Moreover, the air operators' permit mandates that airlines inform the government about non-adherence of schedules," DGCA chief Kanu Gohain said.

A senior official of a south India-based airline complained that they were willing to operate flights to Mumbai but were not able to do so as the slots were all taken on paper. "As many as 15 daily slots at Mumbai's choked airport are not being utilised by one airline alone. But since these airlines have not given up these slots and continue sitting over them, we could not operate more flights in and out of Mumbai," the official said.

The other fallout of flight reduction is that airlines have mainly withdrawn from loss-making and unprofitable sectors that are mainly between metros and small towns. Government rules mandate that airline have to operate a fixed percentage of the flights they operate on metro routes on three sectors — metros to small towns; other places to Jammu and Kashmir, northeast and Andaman and within J&K and northeast.

One airline withdrew a large number of flights on these unprofitable sectors and instead tried to fulfil that condition by buying available seat km — ASKM, total number of passengers multiplied by distance flown on metro routes — from a regional airline that flies from metro to small towns. The aviation ministry has now approved a DGCA proposal that bans trading of ASKMs between schedule national and regional airlines so that schedule airlines meet the requirement and not try to bypass them by other means.