The government has started consultations on relaxing the eligibility criteria for allowing Indian carriers to fly abroad, Minister of State for Civil Aviation K C Venugopal informed the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday.
“Consultations are on with Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) to explore the possibility to relax eligibility criteria based on international practices,” Venugopal said.
As per the present norms, an Indian carrier can qualify to operate international routes only after it has flown domestically for five years and has a fleet of 20 aircraft.
Venugopal was asked by AIADMK member A W Rabi Bernard whether such consultations had begun and whether the move would benefit airlines like GoAir or new entrants like Tata- SIA.
Domestic carriers have been for a long time requesting the Government to relax the stipulation as it disallows airlines to expand their operations to overseas destinations. No such rules prevail in other parts of the world.
Replying to a query the minister said there was no proposal to privatise Air India.
Regarding losses of the airline industry, Venugopal said IndiGo and GoAir were the only ones among nine scheduled Indian carriers which reported profits in the last financial year. IndiGo reported a profit of `7,957.9 crore, while GoAir’s profit was `850.9 crore in 2012-13. While the losses of AI combined was at `29,866.5 crore, SpiceJet was the next with `2,798.2 crore.