NEW DELHI: During a bilateral meeting between India and the UAE on Wednesday, the Civil Aviation Ministry refused to enhance the air traffic rights to the Emirates’ airlines.
Sources said the representatives of the UAE’s civil aviation authority were miffed at the refusal by the Indian side and threatened to walk out of the meeting. The UAE was seeking enhancement on air traffic entitlements which was refused by the ministry, a source said.
They also wanted country-to- country memorandum of understanding between India and the UAE instead of four MoUs between the UAE’s four emirates and India.
India’s air service agreement with the UAE is different from the standard bilateral flying agreements signed between two countries. While India has single air service agreement with the UAE, New Delhi has given separate traffic rights to four Emirates of the UAE.
Because of this, airlines of the four emirates — Etihad (Abu Dhabi), Emirates (Dubai), Air Arabia (Sharjah) and RAK Airways — have separate MoUs for traffic rights. The departure from the global norm was due to reluctance by each Emirate to share its entitlement with each other.